True Valor

by Jax Hunter

“Ahí está” Cruz laughed under his breath and stroked the monitor lovingly.

  Nic turned and looked at the screen where file directory after file directory rolled by. He moved over to the desk and pulled up a chair.

  They spent the next half hour searching through file names for anything even closely resembling sheriff, Raines, or deputy. Nic was getting frustrated, but Cruz continued to patiently scroll through the files. The dude had endurance and was wicked good at this stuff. This stuff drove Nic up a wall.

  “Maybe this guy didn’t write anything down.” Nic jumped up, pacing again.

  “I think you may be right,” Cruz said. “He certainly didn’t have many documents stored on this computer, and those I’ve looked at have nothing to do with Raines or anything else that might get him killed.”

  “Where else would he put it, if not in the documents?”

  Cruz didn’t answer until after looking through the rest of the document files. “We can check the financial files and see what’s there. We can check the history on his browser. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

  It took another fifteen minutes to go through the financial files. No surprises there. Patrick Galloway still earned retirement pay from the Army and had income from investments. All in all, he and the wife had done quite well and lived comfortably. But there was nothing that looked suspicious or would explain murder.

  Nic froze as a police cruiser slowly approached the house. Cruz stopped tapping on the keyboard. When the cruiser went on by, Nic let out his breath, and the tapping continued.

  “Well this guy certainly kept his cookies cleaned up, damn it. That really only leaves his favorites.”

  Nic again sat down beside Eric as he clicked through the sites Galloway had considered important enough to keep.

  “Well, this is interesting.”

  Stars and stripes and all things patriotic filled the screen. Cruz scrolled through the list of Distinguished Service Cross winners obviously looking for one name.

  “There he is.”

  The cursor came to rest on the name Frank Raines.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nic whispered.

  Right there, on the screen in front of them, was motive for murder.

  Frank Raines—Staff Sergeant Frank Raines—had indeed received his country’s second highest honor. However, there was one small detail that turned on the light for Nic and Eric.

  Frank Raines had been awarded that honor posthumously.

  “So, if Frank Raines died before he could see his medal,” Cruz smiled ruefully, “then who the hell is the Sheriff of Lassen County?”

  Nic hummed a sinister tune.

  “No kidding.”

  The hair on the back of Nic’s neck bristled at the thought. “And what would make a guy want, or need, to do that?”

  Eric continued to scroll through the few favorites Patrick and Ellen had left. “Well, he’d have to not want to be who he was pretty badly. Another question is whether he’d want that identity bad enough to kill for it, even back then.”

  When there was nothing more to look at on the computer, Cruz re-deleted what he had found and turned it off. He then pulled off the latex gloves and stuffed them in his pocket.

  Neither man spoke until they were in the car and on the road to Quincy. It was fairly obvious the Galloway family and maybe Uncle Jess, were all killed because they knew about the medal. Nic and Eric had no way to prove it, though. And the information they did have just led to more questions. Was it simply an old secret that Raines was protecting or were there other shady activities an investigation would uncover?

  It really didn’t matter. Raines was willing to kill people and it was only a matter of time until he would find a way to get to Julie and, by extension, Nic as well. They needed enough information to force the authorities to take action against one of their own.

  “So, what do you think of Sheriff Raines?” Julie asked Liz as they talked. The sheriff had visited Julie twice in two days. He’d been friendly, solicitous, assuring her that he believed her innocence. He was very charming in an aw-shucks way, but there was something about him that made her uncomfortable.

  Liz wrinkled her nose in response.

  “Really? How come?”

  “I don’t know. I hate the way he uses my name in every other sentence. I mean, it’s a little over the top.”

  “I noticed that, too. Did he go to salesmanship for law enforcement or something? It’s creepy. But at least he thinks I’m innocent. That’s more than I can say for your undersheriff.”

  Liz pushed back her chair as she stood. “Things aren’t always as they seem, Julie. I gotta get back to work. Talk to you later.”

  What could that mean? That Brogan thought she was innocent? Couldn’t be that, ‘cause he had the keys. So, Raines was not what he appeared to be? Maybe Julie could press Liz for more on her next visit.

  Nic spent most of Monday in Susanville, looking through the archives of the local paper. Raines had been sheriff in the sleepy community for the past sixteen years, having just won re-election again last November. Before that he’d lived in Tennessee. Nothing Nic dug up gave him any idea when or where the new Frank Raines had come into being but it was definitely before he came to California. To find out which person had that identity in Tennessee would take a lot more digging.

  Raines was well liked in town. That is, by the white-collar population. Those that hung out at the local bar were of another opinion entirely. They weren’t in the least impressed by cowboy poetry or cowboy antics. The sheriff never reined in his loose-cannon deputies and a person could only get a fair hearing if he wasn’t riffraff.

  Cruz was into the third level of records for the 9th Infantry Division and, so far, the pictures all matched. Eric had been through the first twelve years of Raines’ military career. There weren’t a lot of pictures, but so far they showed the smiling face of someone entirely different than the man who now resided in that identity.

  A knock at the door snapped Cruz from his work. He glanced at his watch. Three thirty-five.

  “Julie! Madre!” Eric snatched her into the room, glanced outside to see if they had other company, and shut the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “They let me go.” She tugged her arm loose from his grasp. “Is Nic here?”

  “Not at the moment. What do you mean they let you go?”

  “It’s not a hard concept. Apparently, they didn’t believe Nic’s accusation, believed my story instead, and let me go.”

  While she talked, Eric packed. They needed to vamos. It wouldn’t take long for Raines to find out, if he didn’t know already, that Julie was out of jail. And in a town this size, it wouldn’t be hard to find out that she’d come here.

  Damn, if only Nic had his phone. He’d left it charging in the room.

  Cruz went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water, closing the door behind him when he came out.

  “Does Raines know that you’re out?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “We need to load up and get out of here.” Cruz handed Julie the laptop case. He grabbed his duffle bag and led the way to the door. Before he got there, though, she moved around in front of him.

  “Look, Cruz, I don’t even know you. You may be Nic’s friend, but I don’t even know Nic that well. No way I’m going anywhere unless you explain.”

  At the shake of his head, Julie put down the case and crossed her arms.

  Exasperated, Cruz pulled up in Julie’s face. “Julie, Nic and I will fill you in later, I promise. But right now, we have to go.”

  Julie watched Eric’s smile vanish—replaced with intensity. She’d seen Nic make the same transition, but it was much more pronounced with Cruz. His flirty, cheerful optimism was now tempered with the edge that likely made him a kick-ass warrior.

  Julie was convinced.

  “What about Nic?” Julie asked as they threw the gear in the back of the green sedan in the parking lot.

  “We’ll leave him a messa
ge.”

  Julie followed Cruz back into the room.

  “Grab a pair of Nic’s shorts,” he said, pointing to Nic’s bag and going again into the bathroom. Instead, Julie followed him.

  On the steam-fogged mirror, Cruz wrote three, three, three, nine, nine, zero, seven. Then, he reached into the shower and turned off the water.

  “Did you get the shorts?” Eric barked.

  His voice sent a tingle of fear down Julie’s back, like when a cop asked to see your driver’s license and proof of insurance. He looked at Nic’s bag and back to her, raising an eyebrow.

  “Sorry.” Julie scurried to do as he’d asked. She felt creepy digging through Nic’s clothes and even creepier pulling out his underwear.

  “Throw them over the lamp and let’s go.”

  Eric managed a typical wicked grin at the look she gave him.

  “Some sort of code?”

  “PJ-speak. Nic’ll get the message.”

  First things first. Cruz took the opportunity to swing through a fast-food joint. When he took the airport turnoff, Julie came to life. She hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Gansner Field.”

  “I thought...”

  He smiled at her confusion. “We’re flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “Geez, chica, you can’t think I’d drive this far, even for Nic?”

  Chapter Eighteen