Far Gone

by Laura Griffin

  She glanced up and caught him staring at her.

  “They’ve doubled up on the senator, though,” Torres said. “He’s now got two more at his house interviewing him, along with a surveillance team on him and his wife. Still the private bodyguards, which is either good or bad.”

  “Good,” Jon said. “I met them in Arizona. They’re supposed to be the best.”

  Torres nodded. “Well, something’s up in Philly, because at least some of the momentum’s shifting away from there.”

  “But not to us,” he said bitterly. A couple of additional agents was nothing relative to the size of the case before them. Which told Jon that many people believed they still didn’t have a case.

  “Maxwell wants an all-hands meeting in thirty minutes,” Torres said, “to give everyone a rundown.”

  “And this?” Jon jerked his head at the border agents clustered nearby.

  “He wants CBP to take it from here.” Torres paused. “What about Andrea?”

  “What about her?”

  “She seems pretty shaken.”

  “She is. And she’s dehydrated. She needs to get back to town, get indoors. I’ll take her when we wrap up here.”

  “Take me where?”

  He glanced up to see her striding over, looking primed for a fight. “They’re suspending the search for now,” he said.

  “Who is?”

  “My SAC. He wants a team meeting.”

  Andrea glanced over her shoulder at the line of cars, where several CBP agents seemed to have gotten the word and were now packing up to leave. She glanced at the sky, where the chopper had disappeared. They’d been over this entire area, and it was obvious to everyone but Andrea that the chances of finding Gavin out here—injured or otherwise—were rapidly fading.

  “The unit with the search dog’s gonna stay on,” Torres said, probably reading her expression. “If there’s anything here to find, he’ll find it.”

  Andrea looked at them, her face taut with worry. Despite the sunburn on her cheeks and nose, her skin looked wan. Jon wanted to get her out of here.

  “I need you to drop me at my house so I can pick up my truck,” he told her.

  “Get someone else to take you. I’m staying here.”

  “Andrea—”

  “I’m staying.”

  Torres sent him a look. “Think I’ll go talk to Whitfield, give him the update.”

  Jon felt his temper rising as Andrea glanced over her shoulder at the canine team. The German shepherd stood in the shade of the SUV, lapping up water from a plastic bowl. Andrea had to be at least as tired and thirsty as that dog.

  “You’ve been at this five hours, Andrea. You need a break.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “CBP can handle it. They’ve got a search dog.”

  “And they’ve got me,” she said, daring him to challenge her. The words back off were not in her vocabulary, and she was offended he’d even suggested it.

  “Andrea.” He struggled for patience. “You look sick. You haven’t eaten today, and my guess is you didn’t sleep much last night.” He paused. “Am I right?”

  “I had a granola bar.” She looked out at the desert, avoiding eye contact.

  “Andrea, we’ve got alerts out for him. We’ll find him. All you’re doing out here is working yourself into a panic. I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

  Anger sparked in her eyes as she turned to face him. “Let me ask you this: if your sister was lost out here, injured and thirsty, would you sit back and let someone else find her?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought.” She pulled the shades off the top of her head and shoved them on. “Go to your meeting, North. I’m not leaving.”

  ♦

  “Let’s start at the top,” Maxwell said. “We’ve got an alert out for Gavin Finch at border checkpoints in El Paso, Presidio, Boquillas, and Del Rio.”

  “And with TSA agents at all the nearby airports,” Jon added.

  “Anything else turn up? Whitfield?”

  The agent glanced up, startled. “Uh, nothing here.”

  Whitfield looked beat. Everyone did. It was after nine P.M., and they were suffering through the second team meeting of a grueling day. Everyone was ready to call it a night, particularly the new recruits from Philadelphia. Theilman and Santucci were still on East Coast time.

  “Well, at this point, I think he’s officially disappeared on us,” Maxwell said, king of the obvious. “If he’s running, that tells me he’s probably hiding something. If he’s not running, that tells me he’s probably dead. North?”

  “Sir.”

  “Your team’s latest report says no one at that ranch has an active cell phone that we’re aware of. Have you developed anything else? How’s he communicating with his sister?”

  “Occasional e-mails,” Jon said. “Using the satellite Internet connection, the people on the ranch could be going online to check e-mail, Skype, send messages, whatever.”

  “And?”

  “And our surveillance team’s been running a scan ever since we found out about the SNAP system,” Jon said. “But so far, no intercepts.”

  The door swung open, and Torres tromped into the room, bringing a gust of wind with him. Like Jon, he was still in tactical pants and heavy boots. A thin layer of dust covered him from head to toe.

  “Any news?” Maxwell asked.

  He grabbed a seat beside Jon. “Just finished another search with the canine team and Andrea Finch. Nothing.”

  Expressions soured around the table at the mention of her name.

  “This is the cop from Dallas?” Theilman asked.

  “Austin,” Jon said.

  “I hear she’s up on disciplinary charges. You really think she’s reliable?”

  “Charges?” Maxwell looked at him. Clearly, this was the first he’d heard of it.

  “Detective Finch is on administrative leave following a shooting incident. It’s under review now, but she’s expected to be greenlighted to go back to work soon.” If she hadn’t been fired for missing her hearing today.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t trust her,” Theilman said. “Maybe she’s holding out on us. How do we know she didn’t help her brother flee the country?”

  “I was with her when she went to pick him up,” Jon said. “He was a no-show.”

  “You been with her twenty-four seven? Maybe the meet was a ploy. Hell, maybe she drove his car into the desert and left it there so we’d be chasing our tails while he makes a run for the border.”

  “Let’s keep our eye on the ball,” Maxwell said. “Our primary objective is Hardin. When’s the last time we saw him?”

  “No visual on him today,” Whitfield reported. “But his truck hasn’t moved in the last thirty-six hours, so the assumption is he’s still there.”

  “Who do we have a visual on from today?”

  “Mark Driscoll and his wife left the property at eleven thirty-five A.M. to go into town. They stopped at the grocery store, then McDonald’s, then went straight back home.”

  “You find out what they bought?”

  Whitfield sighed and flipped open the notebook in front of him. “Cat food, milk, tampons, and a six-pack of Cokes.” He turned the page. “Also a McRib sandwich and two large fries.”

  “I think we need to beef up surveillance around the property,” Torres said. “We’ve only got eyes on two gates, and we might miss something.”

  “It’s already happening,” Jon said.

  “Since when?” Maxwell asked.

  “Since this morning, when we learned from Detective Finch that some people have been using roads on the adjacent ranches to come and go.”

  “We have to be careful,” Maxwell said. “The last thing we need is for them to know they’re under surveillance. Then we’ll run the risk of a standoff, like the Ruby Ridge debacle.”

  “Why don’t we just surround the place?” Whitfield put in. “Then at least we’d have the son of a
bitch pinned down. Who cares if he knows about it?”

  “A standoff means possible casualties, both law enforcement and civilian.” Maxwell glanced at the faces around the table. “We’re trying to minimize confrontation and avoid a showdown. And that comes from on high. We don’t want another Waco.”

  “Why don’t we just pick up Hardin and interview him?” Santucci asked in a rare display of speech.

  “We’ve been over this,” Maxwell said. “That tips our hand. I can’t stress this enough: we need physical evidence against Hardin and his conspirators. The Justice Department is under huge pressure to bring this case to trial, and it’s turning into a clusterfuck.” He turned to Jon with a dark look. “What do we have on the car?”

  “Prints just came back, and no hits in AFIS. But that’s not surprising, because Gavin Finch has never been arrested.”

  “We’re sure?” Theilman asked.

  “He’s got a clean record,” Jon said. “Never even had a speeding ticket.” Now he sounded like Andrea, but he needed to put it out there. “Some of the prints on the passenger side are smaller, possibly a woman’s. My guess is Vicky Leeland.”

  “Why?” Maxwell’s gaze narrowed.

  “According to Detective Finch, her brother might have been having an affair with her.”

  “Where is she?” Maxwell’s gaze shot to Whitfield.

  “No visual on her today. And her car isn’t there—or at least, it wasn’t when we did the last flyover. No one’s seen it reenter the property.”

  “It’s possible she’s with Gavin Finch,” Jon pointed out. “Our alerts include her, too.”

  “What else do we know about the car?”

  “Also recovered: a pair of pink flip-flops, women’s size six. And a whole lot of trash. Plus the blood, obviously. Lab’s working on that now, but it will take a few days, at least.”

  “Well, that’s not much.” Maxwell sighed. “I was hoping they might have found a bag of hundred-dollar bills we could tie back to one of these bank robberies. Guess that would be too easy.”

  “They did find some money,” Torres said. “Evidence team recovered fifty-eight bucks from the glove compartment.”

  Jon exchanged a grim look with Torres. Most people wouldn’t leave cash behind. If they had a choice.

  Jon had a very bad feeling about this whole situation. He stared at the window as he thought about Andrea, combing the desert until she was ready to pass out. She’d been expecting to find a corpse. He’d seen the bleak certainty in her eyes.

  Jon raked his hand through his hair. He truly hated this case.

  “North, you’ve got a rapport with the sister,” Maxwell stated. “You think she’ll tell you if her brother reaches out to her?”

  Rapport. That was one way of putting it.

  “I don’t know.”

  The hard truth was that even after everything they’d been through, Jon still didn’t believe she trusted him.

  “Keep tabs on her,” Maxwell said. “She’s our best connection to the brother. On the off chance he’s still alive, he might know something that could break this thing open.”

  ♦

  The stoplight blinked yellow as Jon drove through town, scanning all the parking lots. No brown Dodge. No white Jeep. It was after midnight, and Maverick was shut down almost completely, with the exception of a single gas station, where a spotlight beamed down on a self-serve pump.

  On the phone an hour ago, Andrea had said she was going to bed, and she’d sounded tired enough to be convincing. But he’d driven by her motel, and the Jeep wasn’t there. He’d driven by all the local motels and had spotted no sign of her. Where the hell was she? He wouldn’t put it past her to be traipsing around the desert by flashlight, still searching. It would be a desperate thing to do, but the last time he’d seen her, that was precisely the emotion engraved on her face: desperation. And fear, with maybe some anger thrown in to make the other two bearable. Jon didn’t mind the anger—he welcomed it, in fact. It was better than seeing her scared.

  Jon pulled out his phone and called, but it went to voice mail, and he skipped leaving another message. He made another pass through town and then headed out to his house.

  He needed to stay away from her. He was too close, too involved, too biased now to be objective about his job. She had him actually worried about what happened to her brother. Not just about how to bring him in but how to help him avoid a fate of his own damn making. It was screwed up, and the solution was to put some distance between himself and Andrea—which seemed to be happening on its own now, anyway. Keep tabs on her. Right. He couldn’t even get her to return a call.

  Jon turned onto his street. A pair of headlights blinked into his rearview mirror. A punch of relief hit him, but it was quickly replaced by frustration.

  He whipped into his driveway as the Jeep rolled to a stop in front of his house.

  Jon climbed out. “Would it kill you to return a phone call?”

  She didn’t say anything, but her look was belligerent as she approached his truck. “What’s the news?”

  “Nothing.” He slammed the door and turned to scowl at the Rottweiler going bonkers on the other side of the fence. When he turned back to Andrea, she was watching him, searching his face for answers.

  And suddenly he felt like shit, because he didn’t have any.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, but it wasn’t her typical defiant stance. She looked like she was hugging herself. She glanced away from him, and he’d never seen her seem so small.

  “You look worse than you did earlier,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Out.”

  Not quite the comeback he’d wanted. The worried look on her face pulled at him. The logical part of his mind shouted a warning, but he ignored it.

  “Come on.” He took her hand. He must have caught her in a moment of extreme vulnerability, because she followed without the slightest resistance.

  He unlocked his door and stepped into the cold, dark house that had been empty for eighteen hours. He flipped on a light and pulled her into the kitchen, where he opened the cabinet beside the sink.

  “What’s that for?” She eyed the bottle of Patrón warily.

  “Comfort food.” He took down two juice glasses and poured them each a generous shot—or three. He held hers out and stared her down until she took it.

  “I hate tequila.”

  “You need it.”

  She lifted the glass reluctantly and examined its contents.

  “No worms, I promise.”

  She surprised him by tossing it back. She plunked the glass on the counter and doubled over, coughing.

  “God, that’s awful.”

  He downed his shot, savoring the fire as it slid down his throat. He rested his cup beside hers, and she stared down at the twin glasses, both with barely a sip left.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “No.”

  She drained the rest stoically, and he followed suit. When their glasses were side by side again, he looked at her and felt the booze kicking in.

  The room fell silent. Even Loco had quieted. The air was charged with tension as he held her gaze and reached up to touch her cheek. He stroked his hand down and let it rest on her shoulder. He could see the pulse thrumming at the side of her neck as she eyed him mistrustfully.

  Something twisted inside him. All this time together, and she still didn’t know. She didn’t have a clue how he felt about her.

  He leaned his head down and kissed her.

  chapter twenty-three

  THE SLOW BURN SPREAD through her body as she lifted her arms up around his neck and their hips connected.

  He kissed her forcefully, and her heart pounded. This was a bad idea. Her emotions were up. Her defenses were down. Which was exactly why she wanted his strong arms around her and his weight pressing against her body. His kiss was determined, insistent, as if he was done with excuses, and he knew she was done, too.

  She combed her hands th
rough his hair, and her fingertips tingled. It’s the tequila.

  But that wasn’t all. The real intoxication was coming from the decision she’d made when she let him pull her into his house.

  The burn spread, and she gave herself over to it. His hands closed around her waist, and he lifted her onto the counter, pushing her knees apart. His palms slid over her thighs, and when she leaned into him it was like an electric current passed between them. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him against her and kissed him, dimly aware of him tugging at her T-shirt, pulling it from her jeans. He kissed her with a hot, fierce urgency as his fingers slid over her ribs. His thumbs brushed her nipples, and he made a low groan in his chest as she pulled him closer with the heels of her boots.

  “You feel good.” His breath was hot against her ear, and she tipped her head back as he trailed kisses down her throat. His hands slid around, looking for the clasp of her bra.

  She nudged him away, hopped off the counter, and picked up his hand. “Take me to bed.”

  His gaze heated, and he pulled her the short distance across the house. The only light was a wedge of yellow from the hallway as he leaned her back on the bed and stripped off her boots, then her T-shirt. He kissed her face, her neck, her collarbone. He slid the straps down her shoulders and moved to her breast, hovering until she looked at him, and then the hot pull of his mouth was a jolt that had her arching off the bed. She gripped his shoulders.

  “God, I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” He slid his mouth down her body. “You have no idea.”

  She managed to tug his shirt up while he kissed her, and she got her hands on all those firm muscles. He sat back and yanked the T-shirt over his head, and she was speechless at the sight of him in the dim light, all bronze skin and defined abs. He didn’t seem to notice her gaping, though, because he was too busy unbuttoning her jeans and kissing her and stroking his hands over her arms, her breasts, her thighs. He eased her zipper down, and she lifted her hips as he peeled off the jeans, leaving only her white cotton bikinis.