K-9 Recovery

by Danica Winters

Chapter Eleven

  Grant tapped away on his computer inside the truck. Elle had gone quiet, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she was relieved or upset. She was softhearted, and surely the senator had thrown her for a loop, yet she wasn’t giving her thoughts away.

  If anything, she looked okay. Maybe the senator’s words had helped to mollify the guilt she must have been feeling about Lily falling to the family’s enemies.

  Grant opened the audio file. The sound was poor and the man who was speaking was slurring as he spewed hate for the senator. He didn’t mention Catherine.

  “Do you want me to look through Catherine’s phone?” Elle asked, finally breaking the silence between them. “Maybe I can pull something.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed it over to her. “Have at it.”

  They had gotten a warrant after they had sent a preservation letter to request that the phone company save the data from the phone as well as from the senator’s, but so far, he hadn’t received the device’s text message and call history. With it open, they might not have to wait for the company to get on the ball.

  She tapped in the unlock code and flipped through the screens while he turned back to his computer.

  He started by running Jazz through the database. The man came up known, but clean. Next, he turned to the contractor, Philip. Nothing came up when he typed the man’s name in the database. As a contractor, the man might be using a false name, Grant thought. He ran the name as an alias, but no matter how deeply he searched, he couldn’t even pull this guy’s driver’s license or known address.

  His thoughts moved to Elle. Was she the same way? Was her name even Elle? What if she was working under an alias and just couldn’t tell him? If she was, so was the rest of her family. The Spades were well-known in the small, local law enforcement community. They and the rest of the STEALTH group were always more than willing to lend a hand or get information when they were in a pinch.

  Yet that didn’t make what he knew about her any more real or accurate than what he knew about the senator. The realization bothered him, deeply. At the same time, he couldn’t condemn her or judge her because of her lifestyle. There were innumerable details that he couldn’t give her about himself. Besides, what was really in a name or background information...even in a past? He liked the woman who sat beside him, the woman who wasn’t afraid to show her emotions, who worked harder than most people he knew and lived to make the world a better place.

  He sat there thinking about everything as he stared at the screen and pretended to read through the list of ongoing and open calls coming from dispatch. “Elle,” he said, finally unable to hold back any longer, “do you use an alias?”

  She jerked as she looked up from Catherine’s phone. “Huh?”

  “Is your name really Elle?” He felt sheepish for even asking.

  She chuckled. “You finally going to ask? I was wondering if you would.”

  He shrugged.

  “Yes, my name really is Elle. But when I’m not home, I work under any number of names depending on where in the world I will be. Why?”

  He was secretly thankful she had trusted him enough to give him her real name.

  “The guy you recognized, do you think he’s working an alias right now?” Grant lifted the phone so she could look at the man again.

  “If he is on a contract right now, he probably is using a false name.” Elle paused for a moment. “And if he was working under an alias, it makes me think he is definitely the man that we should be looking for.”

  Grant nodded, but he hadn’t needed her to point him in the man’s direction; he was already there. He typed in the next suspect’s name and waited as the computer ground through the data. Several different Steve Rubbicks popped up; they were a variety of ages ranging from eighteen to eighty-four. From the picture, he guessed the guy they were looking for had to be in his late thirties to early forties. Three off the list fit the demographic.

  He clicked on the second one, and the man who popped up was a ringer. Same dark eyes and cleft chin. According to arrest records, the man had been locked up for a PFMA, or partner/family member assault, five years ago. Since then, he’d been free of trouble, but in his booking photo there was a swastika tattooed at the base of his throat.

  According to his arrest record, his last known address was just outside city limits.

  “I have a hit.” Grant smiled. “Buckle up. Let’s take a ride out to Steve’s place. See if we can find him.”

  Elle buckled her seat belt, but she barely looked up from the phone. It surprised him that she wasn’t more excited, but even he was feeling like this very well could be an ill-fated run. The man had been at the right place at the right time to fall well within their list of suspects, but he seemed like the kind who wasn’t about to just roll over and give them the information they wanted. If anything, he looked entirely antigovernment in the way he sneered back from his booking photo.

  How had such a man ever even stood in the same room as the senator’s wife? STEALTH had been tasked with personal security for Lily, but apparently they didn’t have any active roles in monitoring who came and went from the property. And if Catherine wasn’t taking the death threats seriously, it definitely made sense that she wouldn’t have pushed the security team for that kind of vetting.

  It all came back to being from a sparsely populated and isolated state. Around here, there was an inherent trust. And that naive trust had come back to bite the Clarks squarely in the ass. On the heels of his thoughts was his pity for Elle. What a mess she had found herself in—the scandal would undoubtedly mark her career if the public ever caught word of what had led up to Catherine’s death and Lily’s disappearance.

  Even though STEALTH wasn’t responsible for the breech, they would be the ones who would find themselves being scrutinized by the court of public opinion. Luckily, the news hadn’t really broken too wide. The only thing he’d seen mentioned was that the sheriff’s department was investigating a possible homicide. No word of Lily.

  But when and if it came out that a senator’s wife had been murdered, it was possible that all hell would break loose. He would be getting calls from every Tom, Dick and Harry who would swear they saw something and knew all the answers. And then there would be the mix of people who wanted to both commend or condemn him and his fellow officers for the work they did. It was an understatement to say his hands would be full.

  “Do you have any idea what the men were doing with Catherine? Anything at all?” he asked as they drove toward Steve’s place.

  Elle shook her head. “I have no idea. Besides myself, Catherine was the only woman there and I thought that was strange, but I didn’t pay it too much mind given the nature of her husband’s job.”

  “But you didn’t hear anything?”

  She nibbled at the inside of her cheek. “They were just acting like frat boys, laughing and joking. I don’t remember anything that was said, but I would assume that based on how they acted with one another, they likely knew one another fairly well.”

  “Do you think the men worked together? That they could all be contractors or in the same crew?”

  She nodded. “Maybe, but before any are hired, they have to go through a rigorous background check. This Steve guy isn’t someone STEALTH would ever consider hiring, not given his radical leanings—that kind of person makes for a hell of a liability.”

  “I thought you all lived above the law? No offense intended,” he added, but she didn’t give any indication that she had taken it as anything more than a legitimate question.

  “No one is above the law, not even us.” She sent him a knowing smile. “Though we do get to run with a looser set of guidelines.”

  He could imagine, but he’d also seen innumerable headlines about black ops crews that had run afoul of the law—and changed their names and continued on taking care of the business that w
ould always keep them employed. The only people or organizations he had actually heard of being shuttered were the ones who actually did hire people like Steve—the wild cards who got lost in the bloodlust.

  If this guy was a contractor by trade and not merely some radical, then they very well could have been walking into a hornet’s nest. This guy looked like the kind who would be solidly antigovernment and loaded for bear. He probably was the kind who had a target range in his basement and a bug-out tunnel coming out of a panic room.

  Grant had no doubt that if he looked up the man’s ATF records, he would find a list of gun serial numbers that would make any revolutionary proud. And that was what the man had bought legally. Who knew how many guns and incendiary devices he had bought from gun shows and out of the back of people’s cars? Gun trades were a common thing in all rural communities, but in Montana it was well-known that a person could buy or trade for an unregistered gun within the hour if they felt the need.

  In most cases, those kinds of trades and purchases weren’t something to be overconcerned about; it was just like any other flea market or garage sale purchase. See a need, fill a need kind of thing. Yet, when it came to radicals, they were the reason that it was frowned upon. In all of his years in law enforcement, there were only a small number of cases in which they had solved a homicide by using a gun’s serial number. Most of the time, serial numbers were only used to return stolen guns to their original owners.

  As they drove up to the house, there were signs on the trees along Steve’s dirt driveway that read Trespassers Will Be Shot in dripping red spray paint on plywood.

  “Nothing like feeling welcome,” Elle said with a dry laugh.

  “It may not be a bad idea for you to stay in the car while I introduce myself to this guy.”

  Her mouth pinched closed.

  “I just want you to be safe. You’re only a rider. If you were on duty, I’m sure that you would be more than capable of dealing with this guy,” he added, trying to tiptoe around her.

  Her scowl disappeared, and he was pretty sure he had even seen her dip her head slightly, as if she was thinking, damn right. She was something. He liked that she was soft and hard, lace and leather. He had always wanted a woman like that, one who had the power to take control and face the enemy, and who knew she was a badass who could save herself—but one who still occasionally needed saving.

  Right now, she didn’t need to be saved, but he could still give her some level of protection against the unknown and potentially dangerous.

  The road leading to the house was scattered with potholes and cobbles that made the truck bounce and jump, working his suspension. Why was it that all these societal outliers couldn’t take care of their property? Or was it some kind of thing that they wanted to slow any intruder’s advance to their front door? In this case, he would have believed the man capable of that kind of thinking. If he was watching them on a closed-circuit camera, then he was probably already grabbing his mags and getting himself ready for a shootout.

  Luckily, Grant’s pickup wasn’t easily identifiable as a police vehicle. It wasn’t until a person was up close and personal that they could see the light bar in the windshield that really gave it away. To the layman, it was just another truck, but to this guy... Grant was glad to be locked and loaded.

  They came around a bend in the driveway, and the small, boxy house came into view. The place had a corrugated steel roof that was covered in a red patina of rust. The sides of the house were covered with rotting gray wooden siding a few feet up from the ground and then above was torn and faded plastic construction wrap. One of the front windows had been broken, and instead of fixing the glass, the occupants had covered the broken seams with silvery duct tape.

  The driveway obviously wasn’t some plan to slow; rather, it appeared as though it was neglected out of hardship—just like the rest of the place.

  The state of the place was a bit of a shock. Some military contractors made more than $100,000 a year. There were a lot of things a person could do with that kind of money. This man’s property didn’t give off the scent of prosperity in any way. Maybe he wasn’t a contractor after all. Then again, it was also a known thing that when it came to contractors, many had the attitude “earn it to burn it,” and that could certainly have been the case here.

  It would be smart to look bedraggled from the outside if a person was keeping a gun warehouse behind the walls. Robberies could happen anywhere, but most criminals who were after large hauls weren’t going to target a place like this. Then, that could have been thanks to the spray-painted signs, as well.

  If he had been on patrol, this would have been one call he would have loved to take. With something like this, at a place that put off the don’t-screw-with-me vibe, it was always because there was something interesting and usually dangerous to find.

  “I don’t feel good about this. Did you let dispatch know that we were heading out here?” Elle asked, running her hands over her hair.

  “Don’t worry. We will be just fine. Dispatch knows where we are. And you know what to do and how to do it if anything unexpected goes down.” He tried to sound unconcerned but wasn’t sure he had sold it.

  Not to mention the fact that he hadn’t actually told dispatch where they would be located. This had been a last-minute, seat-of-the-pants decision to come out here, but dispatch could find him via his phone if they needed to. His phone, just like everyone else’s in America, could be tracked with little more than a few clicks of a button.

  He pulled the truck to a stop and, with a quick check of his utility belt, stepped out.

  “Don’t go in the house,” she said, still on guard.

  The last thing he would do was enter that house, unless things went sideways. “Don’t worry, babe, this will be okay.”

  Though there was no way he could promise anything other than that the future was unknown, she appeared to relax a tiny bit.

  He closed his door behind him and looked back at her one more time before he walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. There weren’t any visible cameras, but there easily could have been pinhole cameras carefully placed out of sight.

  Grant could hear footsteps coming from inside the house. His heart picked up its pace, and he could feel a thin layer of sweat forming on his lower back, but he couldn’t allow his central nervous system to kick in right now. He was the one who had to be in control, even in the midst of an adrenaline jolt.

  He tensed to listen, hoping that from somewhere inside he would hear the pitter-patter of small footfalls and Lily’s little voice calling out to him. Good God, it would feel so good to get this case buttoned up, and then he could think about all the things he wanted to do to Elle.

  Beneath the bomp, bomp of an adult’s footfalls was a strange pattering click, click, click.

  He had to have been losing his mind or willing things into existence. There was no way in the world that just because he had been hoping to hear Lily’s footfalls at that exact moment that he actually was, but then again, fact could be stranger than fiction.

  “Hello?” he called, putting his hand on his sidearm.

  “I’ll be there in a goddamned minute. Hold your goddamned horses. I’m just putting on my pants.” A man’s voice, raspy and tired, sounded from inside.

  The man could take all the time he needed; the last thing that Grant wanted to see was some guy’s tally-wacker wiggling about while he asked him some questions. Unless it was like Pinocchio and grew any time he told a lie.

  That was terrible.

  Yet, he found himself chuckling. At the same time, he couldn’t help the little voice in his head that wondered if that man wasn’t actually in there putting pants on, but was instead loading a gun and getting ready to shoot him. A push of adrenaline ran through him, making his hands tremble ever so slightly. He squeezed them into tight balls, willing them to come back to fully being
under his control.

  Control. He breathed out as he knocked on the door again.

  This time instead of the man yelling at him, the door flung open. He gripped his pistol, hard. At knee level, a black-and-white goat wearing a hand-knitted purple sweater with a large yellow A on it came bounding outside. It bleated at him, and he was sure it was as close to an expletive as a goat could muster.

  He had seen some strange shit, but this was a new one. When he looked back, a man was standing in the doorway and smirking out at him. “What in the hell do ya want?” the man asked, spitting on the ground beside Grant’s black boot.

  Any hopes of getting this on the right foot were now shot.

  He paused, taking in the man who was leaning against the door frame and sneering at him. He was balding, with a comb-over, fortysomething, and wore a torn flannel shirt. His hands were beat-up and his knuckles were bruised, but they seemed right at home on the fellow.

  “Are you Steve Rubbick?” Grant asked, ever so slightly angling so he was sure that the other man could see the badge attached to his utility belt.

  The man’s gaze flittered downward to his tin star, and the smirk disappeared. “What the hell do you want?”

  “My name is Sergeant Anders from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, and I was just hoping to ask you a few questions. Nothing too major,” he said, trying to put the man a little more at ease.

  The man bristled. “We don’t need no law out here. You ain’t welcome.”

  He wasn’t sure what the man meant by “out here”—they were hardly off the grid, being only a few minutes outside the city, but he didn’t dare press that issue. “I can understand you not wanting to talk to me today. I get that you weren’t expecting this kind of visit during your day.” He spoke unassumingly, trying his best to mirror the man and his speech. “I know when I get a day off from work, the last thing I wanna do is deal with all kinds of nonsense.”

  The man chuffed. “That ain’t no shit.” He leaned his body more against the frame, putting his hands over his chest.