“No shit,” I replied. “I could walk you through the backstory of access points and reverse tracing and all that, but this is the punchline right here.”
Continuing to work on the beverage, Lou stared on in silence. “What’s there?”
“Don’t know,” I confessed. “I’m assuming a crash pad for at least two, as many as four or five people.”
“At least two, as many as four or five,” Lou repeated, staring at the screen before moving her focus outside, her eyes glazing as she took in the muted tones of the motel before us.
In that position she stayed for almost a full minute, processing, saying nothing.
“Where you at?” I eventually asked.
“Right here,” she replied, her voice a touch detached.
Wanting to hurry things along a bit, I asked, “So the hospital was a bust?”
“Total,” she replied, nodding stiffly. “You didn’t kill him, but you did some damage.”
Internally, I tried to weigh whether or not I was glad to hear that, ultimately deciding I didn’t care either way.
The young man was trying to kill us, had been at least tangentially involved in killing Uncle Jep.
Whatever came his way, he had signed up for.
“You know,” Lou said, her gaze still pointed straight ahead, “when you grow up on a reservation, things are different.”
Not sure how to respond, even if I should respond, I merely sat and stared out, both of us locked in parallel gazes, focusing on nothing.
“It’s like a world within a world,” she said. “You’ve got all the usual trappings as everybody else – growing up, figuring yourself out, what you want to do, who you want to be with – but there’s this other layer that exists as well.
“Our own laws, our own system of governance, of identity. It can be hard. Damn hard. Dealing with all that, putting up with the racism, the societal expectations.
“As if growing up wasn’t enough already.”
To my side, I could see her glance my way. Not sure where any of this was going, why she was choosing now to share it, I matched her look, saying nothing.
I had lost my parents young, had served in the military. I was probably the closest she would find to someone that hadn’t walked the very same path she had that understood what she was getting across.
But now was not the time to say as much.
“That’s why I went into sports,” she said. “Poured everything I had into it, took it as far as I could, years past where most people do. Long beyond what most ever even thought I could.”
All of this was news to me. I remembered her being a good athlete – that’s why we had met in the first place – but where it took her afterward, I hadn’t a clue.
At some point, I would have to look into it.
For now, I just nodded.
“Once that was over, the next logical step was this,” she said. “I wanted to help, both my communities, on the reservation and off of it. I didn’t want to spend a decade in school, so this seemed like the next step, especially given the lineage I had, the debt I felt like I owed...”
She paused. Uncertain if it was to look for some form of confirmation, sign that I was still following her, I nodded again.
Even if I had no idea what exactly she’d been alluding to in those last few lines.
“But then...”
Once more she went quiet, this one much more poignant, more pronounced, than the previous times. Recognizing it as such, I didn’t bother to give any visual cues, didn’t even let on as if I was there, merely staring straight ahead.
Where this was coming from or going, I hadn’t the slightest.
What I did know was there was an edge in her voice, a steely resolve that matched what I’d been feeling since the moment the initial shock of my call to Uncle Jep first vanished.
“Shit sure doesn’t end up the way you think it will, does it?”
It took a moment for the words to resonate, to get inside, to register in the way it was clear she wanted them to.
Once they did, there was no mistaking their meaning.
Turning to face her, I asked, “Is that you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
Matching my look, she slowly shifted her eyes to look at the screen still open on my lap.
“Let’s go pay these assholes a visit.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
The door to Vic Baxter’s office closed with barely a sound, nothing more than the metal frame tapping into place. Low enough that he barely heard it, there was no way anybody on the floor below could have, the flow of work continuing at the same pattern as always.
In one corner, a pair of men unloaded fresh frames off a press, the metal cutouts looking like stick figures from afar, just barely referencing the assault rifles they would soon become.
Opposite them, welding torches were in the process of doing that very thing, a shower of glowing sparks hurtling in every direction, miniature fireworks spraying across the concrete floor of the warehouse.
In between, a host of other things, everything from munition testing to product packaging, a tidy operation tucked away deep in the woods.
At a glance, it could have been an auto body shop. Or a textile factory. Or someplace that made something as basic as license plates.
Nothing but a blue-collar organization providing skilled labor employment to a location in dire need of it.
At least, that was how Baxter liked to spin it, more or less the very summation he wrote on his business applications and tax returns every year.
Long ago, his brother Eric had discovered that was the key. Don’t try to hide things. Don’t pretend the place doesn’t exist, that anybody making a wrong turn down a back Georgia road couldn’t plainly see the place.
Certainly don’t go as far as to avoid getting the proper permits or paying taxes. Hell, that was what had brought down the greatest gun runner in the last century, evasion being what finally got Al Capone a cozy room in Alcatraz.
The secret was all in the framing, Eric had said. In putting everything out in the open, but not just hoping that the light hit it in a way so as to obscure the details.
To make sure they were always the ones controlling the light, making it hit exactly as they wanted.
Standing just inside the door, Vic could hear the words of his brother echoing through his mind. Could see yet again the wisdom they contained, the foresight he’d had.
Could also feel the urgency in getting him out of prison, the time they had remaining before his hearing ticking down.
Pulling his gaze from the floor below, he returned to his desk, the interior of the office subdued with the door shut. In the air, he could still smell the remnants of his lunch in the waste receptacle, his appetite having vanished.
In its place was a large knot, a direct consequence of the call he’d gotten an hour earlier, the frantic young man on the other end.
Sending the boys was a mistake. He saw it now, could understand the agitation in Radney Creel’s voice when they spoke.
He thought he was sending reinforcements, someone that Creel could use as bait, drawing Scarberry out into the open.
In reality, he had sent down three young men with inflated biceps and matching egos, three guys that had taken all of a half hour to make a mess of things.
Settling himself down into his chair, he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the edge of the desk. Pressing his middle and index finger into the soft skin of his temples, he pushed them in tiny circles.
Things were spiraling. In his urgency to get to Scarberry, to make sure Eric was best situated, he had gotten hasty. He had failed to make a full calculation, threatening to derail their entire operation.
He couldn’t allow that.
Getting Eric out at the expense of everything else was a cost too great, something neither of them would ever condone.
Pulling his right hand away from his temple, Baxter took up his cell phone. Scrolling down a few spots in his c
all history, he pressed send, putting the phone to his face.
A moment later, the same voice he’d spoken to earlier came over the line, this time with even more disdain than before.
“Yeah?” Creel answered, distraction plain.
“I take it they’ve arrived,” Baxter replied, very much a statement and not a question.
For a moment there was no response, just the sound of heavy footsteps, presumably as he relocated within the house. Much as Baxter had shut the door before phoning, they both knew this was a call neither wanted to have overheard.
“Two of the three did,” Creel said, his voice dripping with vitriol.
His eyes sliding shut, Baxter rotated his left hand from his temple to his forehead, pushing a sigh out through his nose.
“How ugly?”
“A mess,” Creel replied. “The third one was shot trying to run Scarberry off the road. They left him on the front door of the damn hospital, still breathing.”
Pressing his lips tight together, Baxter managed to mute a string of profanity.
“I thought I told you to handle them?”
Ignoring the statement, Creel said, “And did I mention he was shot by Scarberry, as he was riding in a deputy cruiser?”
This time Baxter’s lips peeled back, revealing his teeth locked into a snarl. Pushing himself upright from the desk, he began to pace, his heels landing heavy on the polished wooden floor.
“Again, I thought I told you-“
“What?” Creel snapped. “You think I told them to do that? To go out and open fire on law enforcement in broad daylight and then come back here?”
It was the first time in their years together that Creel had ever said a cross word back to Baxter, a transgression he would deal with soon enough.
In the meantime, they had more pressing matters to concern themselves with, things that affected a lot more than a simple phone call.
“They’re there now?” Baxter asked. When they had called earlier, they had certainly fudged a few of the details, had made it seem that there were some complications and they were circling back with Creel for further instruction.
Never would he have given out the location of the safehouse if he’d known what they’d done.
On the shooting, or the disposal of their cohort at the hospital.
Stopping in front of the picture window overlooking the floor below, Baxter raised a hand to his scalp, rubbing it over the top. The three young men had been selected because of who they were and what they represented, a trio of hard workers and capable individuals, given a special assignment in reward for their service.
But he also had a couple dozen more people that he needed to concern himself with.
His family, and his brother’s, that were of even more importance.
Dropping his hand from his head, Baxter turned his back on the window. Leaning against the frame, he crossed a hand over his stomach and asked, “How fast can you be out of there?”
A pause was the first response as realization set in. “Out of where? This house, or Tennessee?”
Not in the mood for splitting semantics, Baxter said, “How fast to get your asses back here?”
A series of grunts and indiscernible sounds came over the line, no doubt Creel going through the same sorts of silent cursing and thrashing that he’d been doing a few moments before.
“Out or clean?”
“Out,” Baxter replied. “By this point, I’m pretty sure Scarberry knows who is doing this. If he’s riding with a deputy, the law does too.”
Considering it, Creel replied, “Ten minutes. At most, depending on how long it takes these two rookies you sent me.”
Once again ignoring the crack and the underlying insubordination it signaled, Baxter said, “Ten minutes. Get out of there and back here. Scarberry knows what’s happened at this point. He’ll come to us.”
The clock on Eric was still running down, but he couldn’t make a second mistake. That wouldn’t benefit anybody.
Not waiting for a response, knowing that the exaggerated breathing on the other end was Creel’s way of expressing further displeasure, Baxter pushed right past it.
“Give the phone to Pyle.”
“What?” Creel asked, a hint of confusion present.
“Pyle,” Baxter replied. “Give him the phone.”
In the reverse of what had occurred a moment before, Baxter could hear footsteps, voices in the background growing louder with each one, Creel returning to the center of the home.
The sound of a muffled movement came over the line – Creel probably covering the mouthpiece – before Pyle appeared, the first words they’d shared in days.
“Yeah?”
“Finish them.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
There was no way Deputy Talula Davis should be doing what she was doing. It violated every form of training and protocol that had ever been drilled into her, bypassing even the most basic tenants of common sense.
Under no uncertain circumstances should she go anywhere near the house on the other end of the trace that Tim Scarberry had gotten his hands on, the place that was now across the street from where they were sitting.
Looking like nothing more than a ramshackle farmhouse, the sort of place that dotted the entire region, homes that had at one point been the epicenter of the familial and economic structure in the area.
Buildings now sitting empty and silent, their state of disrepair making future use highly unlikely.
To look over at it, it was impossible to tell the last time anybody had even been by the place. With tall brown grass for a front yard and no vehicles parked out front, blinds pulled shut over the windows, it looked the same as it probably had a month ago.
Just as it would a month into the future.
Odds were, they would walk up, pound on the door, and nothing would happen. Whatever tech wizardry Tim thought he had run on the place would be proven wrong, this place just another dead hub, a spot for another receiver, used to run it off to somewhere else.
Another stop in an unending game of hopscotch, meant to give them the illusion of progress while really doing nothing more than luring them in.
That didn’t mean she was any more excited about walking up to the front door and banging on it.
Still, it wasn’t like she could call the station for backup, the staff just Charbonneau and Adams, both probably with their feelings hurt and their underwear in a knot over what she’d said earlier.
Her not getting a call and being fired already was a miracle. Phoning in to ask for help would do nothing but manage to shove that eventuality a little closer.
After what had happened earlier in the day, no chance she was going to bring that about any quicker than necessary.
Not with the yellow pickup and the men that tried to end her still on the loose.
Which was why Talula Davis the person, her father’s daughter, couldn’t fathom walking away, no matter what her training might be telling her.
Seated behind the wheel of her Bronco, she had insisted on driving. Even without a rear windshield and with a handful of bullet holes pockmarking the metal, it at least held the guise of being official, something Tim’s Charger could not.
Much the same as she was the only one present that actually worked for law enforcement, whereas he was nothing more than a concerned family member.
Among everything of concern that was occurring around her, his status still ranked near the top. With both hands clinging to the wheel, she could feel her heart pounding, a light veneer of sweat covering her body.
Earlier in the day was the first time she’d ever taken fire, in a professional capacity or otherwise. It had been equal parts surreal and invigorating, frightening and instantaneous, the sort of thing she wasn’t able to process until after the fact.
This one, she had plenty of time to mull beforehand.
The sum total of that was that Tim was someone she had once known to a degree, a person that she had lost touch with and t
hen believed dead. Years later, he arrived with a connection to her case and a set of skills that belied military training and an attitude that spoke more to an angry family member seeking atonement than a trained professional.
What that added up to, she had no way of knowing, no certainty that she shouldn’t have just cuffed him and herded him into the station that morning.
All that was clear was that he had her back earlier, had held up his word ever since.
And clearly wanted the Baxters as much as she did.
“What’s the subway?”
The first words since they’d pulled up, Davis asked it before shifting to look over at him.
Keeping his gaze locked forward a moment, Tim turned his head slowly to look at her. “Hmm?”
“Riding the subway. You mentioned it earlier, but never got around to explaining what it was.”
Raising the top of his head just slightly, Tim matched her gaze before shifting his focus to look out through the window at the house before them.
“The WITSEC program has different classifications for people they’re protecting. Someone can be in custody, usually awaiting trial. They can also be secure, often relocated, in no immediate danger.”
After the last word, he fell quiet, looking down to his lap, at the top of the duffel bag he held gripped between his fingers.
“And the subway?” Davis prompted.
Maintaining his stance a moment, Tim looked up, sighing as his head rotated toward her.
“The subway is slang for going underground. I don’t think I’m even supposed to know they use the term, but I overheard an escort use it one time. Means they don’t know where the hell I am. Alive or dead.”
Raising her chin a half inch, Davis looked back to the house, trying to superimpose what this meant, if it had any bearing on where they now sat, how they proceeded.
“And that’s what you are now? You just vanished from the Witness Protection Program?”
“Yup,” he said. “Like I told you, when I got that message, I had to come check on Uncle Jep.”
“Right,” Davis conceded. Though he hadn’t exactly put it in those words, obscuring the facts more than a little, he had hinted as much.
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