Abigail folded her arms. “I’m not following.”
A thin smile teased Nabeelah’s lips. “The time when you understand will come sooner than you realize.” She gestured to the headstones. “You’ll honor them by seeking truth, just as they did.”
Abigail refocused on the graves. Mama and Daddy had trained up young students who came to college. But they’d done more than teach in the classroom. The way they’d lived their lives had been lesson after lesson. She knelt and placed roses in each of the holders. “I will, Nabeelah.”
No answer.
“Nabeelah?” She glanced over her shoulder.
The woman had vanished into the fog. Abigail’s headache began making a comeback. Time to head home and grab a nap. Maybe after that she could figure out the riddle within Nabeelah’s warning.
4
Saturday, April 15, 2017, 1015 hours MDT, Sheridan City, UT
She was late.
Jonathan Ward grimaced in the bright Utah sunshine and glanced at his watch. The terse voice mail from Sheriff Monica Wiseman had told him ten sharp. He kicked the ground.
Bryson Bishop pushed away from their silver Ford Fusion. “She did say ten, right?”
“Yep.” Jonathan checked his watch again. “David’s also MIA.”
Bryson focused on the road. “Someone’s here.”
An olive green four-door Jeep Wrangler with the top down pulled into the parking lot.
“Finally! There’s David.” Right then, Jonathan found strength in numbers. “Hey, bro. I was getting worried about you.”
David gripped Jonathan in a brief hug. “There was a holdup on State Road 15. I think it has something to do with our case because there’s tons of yellow crime scene tape and personnel down that way. Sheriff Wiseman’s a couple of minutes behind.” He turned to Bryson. “Good to see you again. Long time, no see.”
Bryson shook his hand. “How’s life treating you?”
David’s easygoing smile covered a second’s hesitation. Not noticeable by anyone but Jonathan, who’d known him for twenty years. “Not bad. It’s been busy. Dad’s doing better.”
“Good to hear.”
A white pickup emblazoned with the Sheridan County seal whipped into the parking lot and screeched to a stop.
Bryson shook his head. “She must have a burr under her saddle or something.”
A tall, slender woman hopped from the driver’s side. Long black hair streamed in a ponytail from a baseball cap with the sheriff’s star emblazoned on it. She slammed the door and marched toward them. Her gaze flickered with recognition when she noted David. “What are you doing here?”
He nodded toward Jonathan and Bryson. “I’m with them.”
She focused on them. “Which one of you is Jonathan Ward?”
Jonathan stepped forward. “That’s me.”
David gestured to Bryson. “This is Bryson Bishop.”
“Sheriff Monica Wiseman. Come with me. Now. All of you.” She stalked into the office. After a “Hi, Claudia” to the receptionist, she pushed through a glass door and led them down a hallway. With a flip of her wrist, she tossed her hat toward a coat stand in an office, where it landed on a hook.
She pointed to a conference room. “In there.”
Bryson muttered, “And don’t move a muscle.”
“Easy there.” Jonathan took a seat and placed a business card at the head of the table. “You know her, bro? She seemed to know you.”
A dull red began staining David’s neck beneath his sailcloth shirt. “You could say that.”
Sheriff Wiseman stepped into the room and slammed the door behind her. “I hope you have a good explanation, Mr. Ward.”
“For?”
She tossed her folder onto the table. “Why a SecureLink convoy wound up as a black spot in the desert of my county.”
Nope, this was not going to be easy. “It might help if you told me what happened. I only know the little that our Denver office told me.”
“I’m the one asking the questions. Not you.” She yanked out her chair. “What do you know about this part of the state?”
Jonathan glanced in his friend’s direction. “Just what I know from David. We’re Army buddies, and I’ve traveled that route while visiting him.”
She leaned forward with her fingers on the table. “I’ve researched your company enough to know you provide protection services to people. Who was your client, Mr. Ward?”
Jonathan’s jaw tightened. “A Mr. Jedidiah Stone.”
She stiffened, then slowly eased onto the seat of her chair. “What were you transporting for him?”
He’d long ago memorized the report from the Denver office about the ill-fated convoy. “The client refused to disclose the cargo.”
“This just keeps getting better and better.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she drummed her fingers on the table. “If you were transporting cargo, why wouldn’t you know what it was? For all I know, that truck could have contained radioactive material that’s now missing.”
“We were escorting the truck. The truck was theirs with their own drivers.” Jonathan’s mind raced. “Look. We’re not from SecureLink’s Denver Office. We were called by Wyatt Evans, the CEO, to investigate it because I lead the Internal Affairs Division for the company.” He offered a conciliatory smile. “Let us help you. For starters, you can call me Jonathan. Mr. Ward makes me feel old.”
Her gaze remained on him. She tapped the business card. “I’ll stick with Mr. Ward for now.”
Yeah, a tough situation had grown tougher. “If they have their own vehicles with their own drivers, they’re not required to disclose anything unless it’s hazardous. Even then, it can be kept confidential unless there’s a need to know.”
She shook her head. “You’re just like the feds. How did you come to know about this?”
“When a convoy’s on the move, they’re required to check in with the appropriate regional office at each pre-designated highway change and every hour on the hour. They radioed when they turned onto State Road 15. Thirty-seven minutes later, when the hour passed, they missed a check-in. Denver office tried to raise them on the radio. Nothing, even on the team lead’s cell. The GPS for the chase vehicle vanished, while the GPS on the lead one was stationary. That’s when they called headquarters.”
Sheriff Wiseman scribbled notes. “Which is where?”
“Chesapeake, Virginia.”
She held up his business card. “This says you’re from North Carolina.”
“Internal Affairs is based there. Wyatt called us, and we were airborne yesterday. We flew into Salt Lake last night, then drove down here this morning.”
She turned to David. “How are you involved?”
David shifted. “I used to work for SecureLink and volunteered my skills.”
That earned him a long look before she returned her attention to Jonathan. “Mr. Ward, your company is in some serious crap over this.”
Would she stop laying into him already? He tightened his interlaced fingers. “I know it seems like I’m stonewalling you. I’m not. I want to get to the bottom of this as badly as you. It would help if you took us to the crime scene.”
She twirled her pen as she studied him. “Why should I?”
Deep breath. Don’t yell at her. He forced his fingers to relax. “Because I owe it to my four guys who lost their lives. And to their families. All I want is the truth.”
She studied him for a long minute as if trying to determine if he possessed ulterior motives. Finally, she grabbed her portfolio. “We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us. Keep up or get left behind.”
With that, she stalked into the hall.
“Is she for real?” Bryson muttered as he jumped up.
They followed her.
Jonathan cast a look at his best friend. “Seems like it.”
David’s features remained inscrutable as they paused at his jeep. “I’ll drive separately. Were you two planning on staying the night?”
If he
wanted to be kept in the loop, Jonathan would probably need to remain there. “Thinking about it.”
Sheriff Wiseman blasted along the highway well above eighty. Jonathan gripped the wheel as he tried to keep up.
Beside him, Bryson talked on his phone, then muttered something and set it on his lap.
Jonathan glanced at him. “News from Salt Lake?”
“The FAA’s working on determining the origin of the flight that brought the truck into the country. And Stone’s personal assistant, a Rupert Randleman, hasn’t returned my call yet.”
Jonathan considered their next move. “Sid Foster from the Denver office is driving down today to ID the bodies at the morgue in Sheridan City. We’ll need to interview him since he supervised Dale and his crew. After that, it’s all ours. How about heading back up to Salt Lake tonight and talking to the airport guys? I’ll stick around here and see about the results of the sheriff’s investigation.” That way, he could catch up with David and his sister, Kyra Martin. She’d promised him a home-cooked meal.
After several minutes on State Road 15, flashing pinpricks of red and blue light in the distance caught his attention. He slowed as flares and cones squeezed traffic into one lane.
They crossed a patch of blackened pavement. A fire had burned a hole in the asphalt. Then came an armored truck with its back doors hanging open. The lead jeep lay on its side at the base of the roadbed. Jonathan shivered as they crept beyond the crime scene.
The brake lights of the sheriff’s pickup flashed as she pulled over.
He did the same and got off the shoulder as far as he dared. “Does this remind you of anything?”
Bryson shuddered. “Last year in Ghazni Province.”
Jonathan wanted tell himself the sweat gathering on his brow was from noonday temperatures in the nineties. He knew better. Fool. It’s from remembering the ambush and Christine’s death. The scene picked at the scab left from his fiancée’s murder in Afghanistan the year before. He pressed his hands against his cargo pants to stop their sudden trembling.
Sheriff Wiseman tapped on the window.
He rolled it down.
“I didn’t drive all the way down here for you to sit in your car.” With that, she turned away.
Bryson gathered his notepad. “Lay off, will ya?”
“No, she’s right.” Focus. You need to focus. This is not Afghanistan. He grabbed a pair of nitrile gloves from his gear bag on the backseat and joined her. “How did you find out about this?”
The sheriff tucked a metal clipboard under her arm. “People driving this highway are very few and far between. Some tourist heading up from Burning Tree to Moab saw smoke, got close enough, and called us.” She pointed at the black Jeep Wrangler with a crumpled rear bumper. “Your lead jeep, I assume.” Her arm swept along a set of skid marks with a numbered placard next to them. “When he slammed on the brakes, your guy probably got rear-ended by the truck. Best we can tell, they went into a sideways skid to the left and corrected. Except it was too late. They did a barrel roll off the road here. Two bodies. Both dead from GSWs. The driver took one to the head. So did the passenger, though he also had two other wounds, one in the right arm and one in the left shoulder.”
Bryson scribbled the information on his notepad. “I assume the bodies are at the morgue.”
“I’m due to meet your guy from Denver there later this afternoon. A Mr. Sid Foster.”
Jonathan gestured toward the jeep. “May we?”
“Be my guests so long as you don’t contaminate the scene.”
Carefully, he made his way down the gravel slope. Once his hiking boots hit sand, he did a walk-around. Cracks crisscrossed the windshield. Glass shards lay below a hole the width of his hand near the ground. And two bullet holes. The driver’s side door yawned open.
Beside him, Bryson snapped pictures.
Jonathan glanced at the sheriff. “May I get the crime scene pics?”
She only turned and hiked up the slope.
The clicks of Bryson’s camera increased in frequency.
Jonathan huffed out a breath and followed her. As he wrangled his hands into the nitrile gloves, he examined the armored truck. The front-end damage matched what he’d noted on the jeep. He glanced at Bryson, who’d stayed by his side. “Do you think the lead jeep braked when the chase one exploded?”
“Probably.” Bryson’s pen moved faster and faster. “And since the armored truck wasn’t being driven by one of our guys, it probably followed too closely and rear-ended the lead jeep.”
Jonathan opened the driver’s door. “Sheriff Wiseman, what do you know about the occupants of this truck?”
She joined him. “Zip. Not even an ID. Just a man and a woman. Both dead of GSWs to the head.”
Bryson studied the window. “Looks like bulletproof glass. Our perps knew about that and used armor-piercing rounds.”
Standing on the step, Jonathan peered at the interior. Bloodstains and gore coated it. A stench of iron and something else he didn’t want to define stirred up memories of the year before. Twenty-four dead in that ambush, some of them from a fire that had consumed them. The rest from gunshot wounds. Except for Christine Parker. The Taliban murderers had singled her out.
His stomach flipped as he joined Bryson. Breathe, Jonathan. Breathe. “They didn’t stand a chance.”
Not back then. Not now.
Bryson stared at the rear of the truck. “This was a very well-planned ambush to steal the cargo.”
Jonathan joined him. “Why do you—Oh.”
His chief investigator pointed toward where the handles had been. “I’m no ordnance guy, but it seems to me someone utilized something like Semtex to blow the locks. They took whatever was inside.”
Jonathan returned to his car, where he extracted a pair of booties from the gear bag. After pulling them over his hiking boots, he hoisted himself into the dim interior. The glare outside temporarily stole his vision. Using a penlight, he surveyed the interior. Whoever had installed the plating hadn’t welded the edges together. Something caught his eye where the back panel met the floor. A piece of paper. He pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and studied it. A corner piece, no bigger than an inch.
“Bryson.”
“Yeah?”
“You got tweezers on you? And can you get an evidence marker?”
“Hold on.” His investigator joined him. “Here.”
After snapping a picture, Jonathan freed the paper. Hmmm. Waxy. And bumpy, as if sand were ingrained in it. “I think I got something. I need an evidence bag.”
“Coming up.” Bryson called something. Sheriff Wiseman answered, and he handed Jonathan a small plastic baggie.
He dropped the piece into it and sealed it before hopping down from the truck. “I found this stuck between two of the panels. I’m not sure what it is, but it feels kind of grainy, like there’s sand or something in it. And don’t worry. I took a picture before I removed it.” He offered it to the sheriff. “It might be a good idea to have your SBI analyze it.”
She took it.
“Have the evidence techs been over the truck?”
She jabbed her hands on her hips. “Do we look like the LAPD?”
He held his ground. “I was just asking a question.”
“Do you know how many square miles of county I have here?”
Jonathan bit back his sigh. “Somehow, I think you’re going to tell me.”
“Over 4,500. That’s how much. And only fifty people on the force, including my evidence techs. We need more. When I got called to this, I was going over final budget figures to report at this Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting.” She swept her arm toward the crime scene. “My techs were at another crime scene, so they just got here this morning.”
“I—”
“Hey, guys, come here,” David called. He knelt beside a charred piece of metal among the scattered pieces of the last jeep.
Jonathan’s nose twitched as he joined him. “An unusual
smell.”
“I think it’s rocket fuel.”
Sheriff Wiseman rubbed her chin. “And not gasoline?”
David straightened. “It’s some sort of propellant used in missiles.”
When would the bad news stop? Jonathan grimaced. “Are you... You think someone fired a missile at the last jeep?”
David shifted to the crater where the fire had burned through the pavement. “Look at the scatter of the debris. Out and forward, right?”
Jonathan raised his gaze. Several yellow evidence placards denoted the breadth of the destruction. “Yeah. The back of the truck looks like it got some shrapnel as well.”
“Something hit it hard enough from behind to completely obliterate it. Monica, did you find any bodies?” David asked.
Huh? They were on a first name basis? Jonathan filed that away for later.
“Pieces,” she replied.
Jonathan flinched. “The feds are going to have to get involved, most likely the ATF. Like today.”
She began shaking her head. “Are you crazy? This is my territory. My case!”
Bryson’s phone rang, and he stepped away.
Jonathan turned to the sheriff. “Look. You just said your staff is overwhelmed. And with missiles involved, this is way beyond your comfort zone.”
“But they’ll take it away from me. And you probably won’t get any information, either.”
She had him there. “I agree.” Maybe offering her a small bone would help. “Before calling them, take that paper scrap to the SBI for analysis Then offer them the results. If you do that, then they may just keep you in the loop. It’s up to you as to when you make that offer, but you’re going to have to keep the crime scene secure until they get here.”
She gazed at the scene as if realizing the enormity of this new twist. “You win. You give me everything you got from your Denver office in return. And send me that picture.”
“Done on both counts.” Jonathan retreated to his car, pulled out his portfolio, and extracted a copy of the report he’d received from the Denver office. He handed it to her, then forwarded the picture to her e-mail. “I’ll share anything else that comes up. Sid will as well. Bryson will make sure of that. Right?” he added as his coworker rejoined them. “You’ll work with Sid?”
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