by Christa Wick
Shaking his head, he returned the notebook. “You’ve got nothing but puzzle pieces that may not even come from the same box.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, tossing her pencil onto the desk. “We either move on or shake the box a little harder to see if more pieces fall out.”
Thomas slid one of the Marla’s Cafe papers over with the name flipped up. “Wanna grab some lunch?”
Ashley scratched her chin.
“You’re an only child, aren’t you, Callahan?”
“So what if I am?”
Reaching across Ashley’s desk, Thomas scooped up the Jeep’s keys.
“Time for the student to become professor,” he teased. “I’m going to give you a lesson in how to play with others.”
Pulling her sidearm and holster from the filing cabinet, she put it on then concealed it with a blue agency windbreaker.
“Fine,” she said, pointing her chin at the office door. “But if we don’t come up with a lead, you’re buying lunch.”
* * *
“Those ribs were amazing,” Thomas chirped two hours later. “And that shake and slice of double-layered cake, I’ll have to get an extra workout tonight to make up for them.”
Signing the receipt for the lunch bill, Ashley rolled her eyes at the young man. He didn’t need to poke at her. Even if they had come up empty at the restaurant, she would have been happy to buy him a meal. His enthusiasm reminded her of the early days working the job. Watching the young waitress fall all over him was also worth the cost of the meal.
Reaching the Jeep, she slid into the passenger seat and plugged a local address into the GPS system. They were headed for a privately owned campground not far from park land.
Thomas put the Jeep in reverse. “You been out that way?”
“Nope,” she answered, pulling out her notebook. “This is month two, week two and I’ve got a huge territory to deal with. What was the name of that waitress?”
“Tracy?”
She wrote the name down.
“Phone number?”
His gaze locked on the road, Thomas didn’t answer.
“I saw her slip it to you.”
Taking one hand from the wheel, he dipped into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tightly folded piece of paper that he handed to Ashley.
“This says Monica,” she chuckled. “Maybe you put it in your other pocket, Romeo.”
Tanned cheeks darkening as his mouth smashed a grin into submission, Thomas reached into the other pocket and handed over a piece of paper folded just as tightly.
Ashley opened it up, wrote down Tracy’s last name and her phone number.
“So who’s Monica?” she teased, writing a summary of the information Tracy had provided.
“Barista near my hotel.”
Finished with her notes, she pulled up the browser on her phone and put in the name of the campground. The first hit was a decrepit looking website with a cartoon moose. Seeing that the last post was from a few weeks ago, she hit the link for STAFF.
“Okay, the Joyce she was talking about is Joyce Franco and she’s listed as the owner and resident manager.”
Thomas slowed for a turn.
“Hopefully she doesn’t have a problem talking to law enforcement,” he said.
“That’s always a problem in this job,” Ashley said. “People move out in the middle of nowhere for a reason.”
“So what’s your reason?” he asked.
Hearing his voice drop low like it had with the waitress, she shot a side glance in his direction. Catching the flash of interest on his face, Ashley shook her head.
“No way, Junior. You don’t get to head shrink me more than once a year. You already reached this year’s quota with the only child shtick.”
Seeing the sign for the campgrounds and the entrance just beyond, she pointed them out. “I’ll do the talking on this one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he smirked, rolling to a stop in front of an RV that had an OFFICE sign on a stick in front of it.
Ashley left the Jeep and walked over to the RV. There were metal stairs attached to the side, but she stayed on the ground and knocked low on the door. She hadn’t done much walking since they discovered the packs were missing, so the leg was healing. But stepping up or down was pure murder. Walking on a gradient wasn’t much better.
The door opened to reveal a woman somewhere north of sixty, a stripe of gray running across her scalp where the roots hadn’t been dyed in months. Other than the two-toned hair and the addition of half a decade, the woman matched the picture of the owner on the website.
“Joyce Franco?” Ashley asked.
The woman looked at the agency windbreaker and the badge visible on Ashley’s belt. Her gaze skipped over to where Thomas was out of the Jeep and standing warily by its front fender.
“What’s this about?”
Ashley swallowed an irritated smile and replaced it with a phony, relaxed version. The woman had avoided agreeing that she was Joyce Franco. That meant she was on the defensive for whatever reason.
“You had a problem Thursday night with some people renting one of your spaces. You mind telling me about it?”
“Not if you want me to do the talking standing here,” she answered, waving them inside. “I’m flashing something terrible right now.”
Gritting her teeth, Ashley climbed up the three steps and entered the RV, Thomas following after her.
Sitting in a chair that had two fans pointing at it, Joyce Franco gestured for them to sit on the plastic wrapped couch.
She cleared a phlegmy throat. “We have a strict curfew here. No in or out between ten p.m. and five a.m. Everybody I rent to knows that includes no guests. The fellas you’re talking about broke both rules—and they were loud jerks before that. Swearing when we got kids and church folks running around.”
She pulled one of the fans closer and dialed its speed up.
“I was set to kick them out, but they pulled away a little after three Friday morning.”
Ashley added the times to her notebook then looked over what Tracy had told them. “The guests hiked in from the north at night, is that right?”
Joyce’s gaze narrowed. “That’s right, but who told you?”
“A couple of people heard you mention it in town, Miss Franco.”
“Mrs. Franco if you’re going to be formal,” the woman corrected. “Joyce if you’re not. Karl’s been dead four years, so I’d rather you go with Joyce.”
“Thank you, Joyce.” Pulling a business card from her pocket, Ashley handed it to the woman. “I go by Ashley or Ash. This is Thomas.”
Joyce looked him over, a girlish smile making her face appear a decade younger. Ashley conquered the urge to roll her eyes. Thomas was on the pretty side, not bad to look at, and a hard worker, which was what really mattered. But she couldn’t see what had Tracy or Monica or, now, Joyce Franco, tittering over the kid.
She could only imagine the reaction the three women would experience coming face-to-face with Walker Turk.
“He’s awfully young for a lawman.”
“I’m still studying to be one,” Thomas answered before getting the woman back on track. “So the visitors hiked in. Does that mean they were wearing backpacks?”
“Not exactly,” Joyce answered. She pointed at a laptop sitting on the kitchen counter and cooed. “Bring me that, would you, Thomas?”
Yep, Ashley thought, hiding her smile behind a cough. The woman was definitely playing the coquette.
Thomas jumped up, crossed the three steps it took to go from living room to kitchen in the RV, carefully picked up the computer and returned to Joyce. Her gaze bouncing between Thomas and the laptop, the woman lifted the screen, typed in a password, then clicked through a few screens. When she found what she was looking for, she showed the display to Thomas first, then Ashley.
There were five men. Strapped to their backs, bundled with ropes and plastic tarps were packs of the same approximate size as those hanging from the tre
es.
“This is from a trail cam?” Ashley asked.
Joyce nodded. “Just got the one shot when they reached the perimeter of my property.”
“Again, the northern perimeter, correct?”
“Correct,” Joyce answered.
“Can you bring in the topo map?” Ashley asked Thomas then turned her attention back to Joyce. “How did these men pay for the space.”
“Park only takes cash,” Joyce answered, gaze narrowing.
Mentally tucking the fact away, Ashley nodded. A lot of businesses around the national parks did most of their transactions in cash because of the bank charge every time a customer swiped their card. There were other reasons they preferred cash. None of the owners liked talking about that part. Many looked at anyone from the government as an IRS agent in disguise.
It wasn’t Ashley’s job to care about taxes. But she did care about money laundering—another activity that thrived with cash operations. For now, Ashley was fine pretending Joyce was only thinking about the taxman.
“Did you get their names and the license plate number for the vehicle you rented the spot to?”
“Yeah.” Squinting at her phone, Joyce tapped at the screen a couple of times then picked up Ashley’s business card and squinted at it.
Feeling her phone buzz, Ashley pulled it out of her pocket and saw a photo of a driver’s license followed a second later by one of the RV’s plate.
“Can you send me a copy of the trail cam photo, too?” she asked as Thomas returned with the map. Looking at him, she smiled. “Need you to be my map stand.”
He unrolled the gloss twenty-four by thirty-six sheet, his arms as wide apart as the space would allow. Ashley pointed at a spot. “This is you, yes?”
“Yeah.” Joyce outlined a small blob of land. “This is all of my property and…this…is where the trail cam caught them. Glad to be rid of them, especially since they paid this week in advance and also forfeited the two-hundred dollar deposit on the space.”
Looking at the location of the trail cam, Ashley traced her finger along the map to a nearby river branch then drew Joyce’s attention to the spot.
“Is this deep enough for rafts or canoes?”
“Rafts, yes,” Joyce answered. “Have to be experienced though. There are some rough rapids about a mile north of here.”
Ashley traced the stream north and tapped on another spot. Standing up, she took the map from Thomas and turned it to face him.
“Could you show my associate that last location, Joyce.”
The woman fluttered her lashes. “I’d be delighted to.”
He leaned forward, studying the map while Joyce tilted her head to the side and eyed the cut of his pants.
Grinning, Thomas straightened.
“I think you owe me another rack of ribs, Agent Callahan.”
Chapter Fifteen
The top half of his torso suspended over the engine of a disabled skidder, Walker heard the muffled ring of his phone in his back pocket. Ignoring the intrusion, he forced another turn on the socket wrench buried in the machine’s guts.
“That should do it,” he grunted, sliding down and leaving it to Kostya to secure the engine cover.
The phone had stopped ringing, so Walker took a second to wipe the sweat from his brow and the grease from his hands. Before he could finish, the phone started up again. This time, he could make out the ringtone, the intro to Steppin’ Stone identifying the caller as his cousin Siobhan.
“What is it, Monkey Butt?”
Usually, only his older brother Adler still called Siobhan by her childhood nickname, but his cousin had been needling him something fierce since she met Ashley. Siobhan had it in her head there would soon be another Turk wedding. As hard as Siobhan was campaigning, Walker worried she would scare Ashley off before his growing relationship with the woman solidified into anything half as serious as marriage.
“Your girlfriend is en route to urgent care in Roundup,” she said before adding a slap. “Stop calling me that, jerk face.”
A blanket of cold dread wrapped tight around him.
“You mean Ashley?” he scratched out. “Why?”
“Yes, Ashley. She and that intern boy-toy were out at the rapids by Joyce Franco’s places. All I know is her leg was jacked up while she was out there. Boy-toy wa—”
“His name is Thomas Crane,” Walker growled. The kid was at least seven years younger than Ashley and her subordinate, not her plaything.
At least Walker hoped there wasn’t anything like that. She wouldn’t have kissed him like she had if she was harboring an interest in her intern.
“Thomas,” Siobhan said, starting over and drawing out the two syllables of the kid’s name, “wanted an ambulance dispatched, but Ashley took the phone from him.”
Finding a tree stump to sit on, Walker rested his head against his free hand and groaned. He could just see Ashley stubbornly walking back to her vehicle, maybe leaning on the intern, but certainly not willing to call for extra help.
“How long ago?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for an hour,” Siobhan answered. “When Thomas first radioed in, but you clearly haven’t had a signal because it kept going immediately to voicemail.”
“So he got her back to the vehicle and is driving her to Roundup?”
“Yes. He said he would call again when he had her checked in. He hasn’t done that yet.”
“Text me his number,” Walker ordered then ended the call.
Marching over to Kostya, he drew the man’s attention. “You know the plan, keep them going while we’ve got daylight.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Kostya answered. “Everything okay?”
Walker stared at the man, the answer obvious in his mind. It was the crew’s first day back to work, all of the equipment finally repaired and run through its safety checks in case the vandals had sabotaged the machines in multiple ways. After a week of downtime, only an emergency would draw him away from the site.
“Sorry,” Kostya blushed. “Dumb question.”
Walker shook his head. “Agent Callahan was injured. Not too badly because she wouldn’t allow an ambulance to be called.”
He clapped his hand on Kostya’s shoulder and lightly squeezed. “Keep the guys safe. Yourself, too.”
“Always, boss.”
Leaving the men to work, Walker sprinted to his truck. Siobhan had finished sending the number for Thomas. He copied it over to his contacts then sent a message asking the intern to call or text updates to him instead of Siobhan.
Finished with the text, he strapped in, kicked the truck into gear and sped away from the job.
* * *
Ashley stared at the doctor as he studied her x-rays. He fiddled with the position of his glasses, pushing them lower down his nose as he leaned in then sliding them back up as his tongue clicked against his upper palate.
Wheeling the portable lightbox over, he used the cap of his pen to point out several dark lines along her tibia.
“The ankle is just a sprain,” he said. “But these are surface fractures.”
Ashley tightened her grip around the edge of the exam table. She could see the prior break in the tibia. The surface, aka stress, fractures the doctor pointed to were positioned just slightly south of where the original break had occurred.
“This was a stable fracture?” He asked and pointed to the remodeling visible on the film.
“Yes,” she answered. For all the bad luck she’d had in breaking the leg a few years back, the ends of the bone had fit together and her skin and muscle tissue hadn’t been pierced.
Ashley had put her windbreaker and holster, complete with gun and badge, over top of the ridiculous gown the nurse had made her wear. The doctor looked over the symbols of her job, his mouth mashing in a downward curl.
“You need to wear a soft cast for a minimum of three weeks, probably six.”
Her head drifted side to side. She would wrap the ankle, stay off the leg as much
as she could—things like that. But she wasn’t going to get sidelined by having to wear a soft cast, especially when she had a fresh lead to chase.
“I didn’t say it was optional, Agent Callahan. Unless you aren’t reporting this incident to your agency, your supervisors will see the diagnosis and my recommended treatment.”
“Soft cast sounds like just the thing,” a male voice rumbled from the other side of the curtain. “Safe to come in?”
The doctor looked at Ashley.
“Yes,” she rasped.
Walker parted the curtains and stepped inside. His gaze went straight to her leg and swollen ankle. From just below her knee to the tip of her toes, varying shades of red colored her skin. The area around the joint mimicked an overripe tomato. A four-inch block that looked like it had been lightly burned by an iron cupped the shin.
Placing his hand on Ashley’s shoulder, he studied her face.
“How’s the pain?”
She rolled her neck, triggering a few satisfying cracks from the spine that settled her nerves.
“Manageable.”
The doctor typed on the laptop he’d brought into the room. Hitting ENTER one final time, he turned to Ashley.
“Front desk will give you a print out of instructions and a prescription before you leave. Right now, a technician will come in with a soft cast and adjust the fit. I’ll check it when she’s done.”
Standing up, he shut the laptop and took it with him as he moved on to the next patient.
Walker claimed the vacated seat, his gaze locked on Ashley’s. Unable to match the intensity of his stare, she placed her hands over her face.
“What does ‘manageable’ mean?” he rumbled.
“Not passing out or puking.”
Her hands muffled her words, but he made them out well enough to chuckle.
“I have a sense you are persistently independent, Ashley Callahan.”
Lowering her hands, Ashley rolled her eyes. Nolan, her one and only real boyfriend had labeled it a pathological trait.
“It’s the Montana in me,” she deadpanned.
He laughed a little louder, rolling the chair closer to the exam table. “You’re from Detroit with a side dish of California.”