Called Home

by Melissa F. Miller

  “You … know about the box?”

  “I know Bedrock Force says you stole top secret information. I assume there’s more to the story.”

  The waiter arrived with their meals and two compostable takeout boxes, a handful of paper napkins and some plastic utensils. “Here you go, ladies. I brought along some boxes in case you have to bolt. Do you need anything else? More water?”

  “We’re all set. Thanks.”

  Dahlia took a big bite out of her taco. Aroostine figured they might as well eat while they could, so she did the same.

  After a moment of chewing, Dahlia said, “There’s a lot more to the story. And I don’t think guys from Bedrock Force are the only ones chasing me. I think the government is, too. I saw a bunch of dudes in suits. I think they were looking for me.”

  Aroostine swallowed, dabbed her mouth, and said, “You’re probably right.” Federal agents would explain the aftershave and hair wax she’d smelled at the apartment. “What did you steal—and, more to the point, why?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking. I was trying to gather evidence and I worried Ms. Markham—that’s my boss—was onto me. So … I panicked and grabbed her encrypted satellite communications device. It’s called a cryptobox. I’m sure it has everything I need to prove what they did, but I can’t break the code. So it’s useless, anyway. And now I’m going to be on the run for the rest of my life or go to prison.”

  Aroostine’s pulse ticked up. A part of her had been hoping the story about the stolen national security information had been just that … a story. But Dahlia really had stolen it. That was bad. Really bad.

  She started scooping tacos and chips into one of the boxes. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Now.”

  The guy she’d spotted in the green Jeep had had plenty of time to call for backup. The taco stand was about to be descended on by men in dark suits—or even worse, a SWAT team in body armor, rifles loaded and adrenaline pumping.

  “But you haven’t heard the whole story—”

  “You can tell me in the truck. Now, Dahlia.” She kept her voice free of fear but edged it with steel.

  Dahlia dumped her taco into a box and threw a fistful of chips on top. Aroostine dug the keys to the truck out of her pocket, took one last gulp of water, and pushed away from the table. Dahlia stood up, clutching the boxes and the plastic forks.

  Aroostine scanned the restaurant. She was sure they could find a back way out through the kitchen or a window in the bathroom. But the man following them had seen her truck. So, there was no point. He could just keep eyes on the vehicle until reinforcements arrived. Unless she planned to abandon the pickup, which she didn’t, they might as well just walk right out the front door and hope for the best.

  She squared her shoulders. “Follow me.”

  24

  Roxanne’s phone rang. She turned down the volume on the radio and lowered the heat under her tea kettle before she picked up the call.

  “Markham.”

  Arnetto’s words came out in a jumbled frenzy.

  “Johnny, slow down. Start over.”

  Arnetto caught his breath. “Sorry. Rue Jackman has an Iowa driver’s license, and her truck is registered with the Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. That’s it. She otherwise doesn’t exist.”

  Roxanne shook her head, rejecting what she was hearing. “How’s that possible?”

  “It’s not. Not unless she’s one of those die-hard, off-the-grid types, which Iowa does seem to attract. But even those people, they usually have some digital footprint. This woman has none.”

  “Who is she?” Roxanne mused, more to herself than to him.

  He answered anyway. “No idea. But she’s someone with some tactical training—she broke into the kid’s apartment. And she’s got a partner.”

  A partner? Roxanne’s head spun. Had Homeland Security sent in a dark team to run parallel to the official investigation? Were Rue Jackman and her partner going to kill Dahlia and take the box? That would solve one problem but create another.

  “Talk to me about the partner. Any idea who he is?”

  “He’s a she. About twenty minutes after Jackman let herself into the apartment, a ride-sharing car pulls up and this young woman gets out. Pink hair, pink combat boots, nose ring, dressed all in black. She’s lugging an enormous duffel bag. She goes into the building. Another ten minutes go by. The two of them come out together and get in the truck.”

  “Where’d they go? Tell me you didn’t lose them.”

  “Of course I didn’t lose them,” Arnetto huffed. “They’re at Manny’s, that twenty-four hour taco joint over by—”

  “I know the one. Pick them up when they come out.”

  “Pick them up? I thought you wanted the girl? And they could be pros. I can’t grab up two professionals without a plan. That duffel bag is big enough to hold scopes, rifles, night vision gear—who knows what’s in there.”

  Roxanne gritted her teeth and switched off the stove. He was right. And that was maddening. He couldn’t confront them—they could be professionals, freelancing for another PMC. They could be federal agents. They could be a pair of trigger-happy, off-the-grid survivalists. Point was, she didn’t know who or what they were. And in her panic, she’d almost made a grievous tactical error: Never engage an enemy until you’ve identified his strengths and his weak points.

  “Markham? Are you there?”

  “I’m thinking. Just keep following them. I’ll call DHS and see if I can find out whether they know anything about these women.”

  “You’re gonna call the suits? I thought—”

  “I know, Arnetto. It’s not ideal. You have any other ideas?”

  “Maybe,” he said slowly. “Give me a couple more hours before you reach out to the feds.”

  “Is he still back there?” Dahlia asked.

  Aroostine glanced in the rearview mirror. He was still there. “Yes. He’s in the bright green Jeep, two cars behind us.”

  Dahlia whipped her head around and peered through the back window.

  “A green Jeep? Like, neon green?” Her voice shook.

  “Right.”

  “I saw him earlier today.”

  “At your apartment?”

  “No. In Vermillion.”

  Aroostine took her eyes off the road just long enough to read Dahlia’s stricken expression. “Where’s Vermillion? And what were you doing there?”

  “I guess you need to know what’s really going on.” Dahlia lowered her gaze to her lap and picked at a loose cuticle.

  “It’d be nice. And you shouldn’t pick at that.”

  The motherly advice had the desired effect.

  Dahlia’s fearful look morphed instantly into one of mild annoyance, and she gave her eyes a dramatic roll. “What. Ever.”

  Aroostine noted that she did, however, stop picking at the skin.

  “So, Vermillion.”

  “Right. Vermillion is about an hour south of here. Vermillion University is there. And there’s a park across from the campus where the water protesters set up camp after the protests at Standing Rock kind of died down. The tents and stuff are still there—that’s where I slept the past two nights—but I didn’t see any of the protest organizers. I think they all cleared out after the murder.”

  Aroostine jolted and her foot pressed down on the gas pedal. The truck bucked forward.

  “Sorry.” She eased off the gas. “What murder?”

  “Two weeks ago, when we were getting ready to leave for the weekend on Friday, Ms. Markham told me she had a special job for me—well, she called it a critical mission, but whatever. She told me to meet her in the office at seven o’clock the next morning and to wear casual clothes.”

  “Seven AM on a Saturday. Bet you weren’t very happy about that.”

  Dahlia laughed. “Actually, I was. I was so tired of doing paperwork and
filling out spreadsheets. A critical mission sounded exciting.” She glanced across the cab. “And, I was starting to regret taking the job, you know? I knew I was selling out, but I really thought it would open up new opportunities for me. Stuff I could never even dream of back on the rez.”

  “But?”

  “But I was just an office drone working for a company that didn’t respect our traditional ways at all. All Bedrock Force cares about is making the government stronger. And making their bank account bigger.”

  Aroostine gave her a moment to wallow in her disillusionment before nudging the story along. “So what was the critical mission?”

  “Our—their—biggest client is the energy company that built the pipeline. We were monitoring the protesters’ social media accounts and even some of their email accounts—don’t ask me how they got access, ’cause I can’t tell you. We were supposed to be looking for signs that they were planning to sabotage part of the pipeline. When I got to the office Saturday morning, Marcus Swanson, the second in command, and Ms. Markham showed me a bunch of messages they said the Department of Homeland Security had identified as reliable chatter about an attack on the pipe.”

  “Wait. Why is DHS involved?”

  Dahlia pursed her lips. “Apparently, the pipeline is so important to the infrastructure that it amounts to a national security issue.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  She shrugged. “That’s what they told us. You wouldn’t believe who all’s working to track the activists. Local police, state police, the FBI, DHS, Bedrock Force and a bunch of other private military contractors. There are so many task forces, it’s nuts. They act like they’re at war with some well-organized terrorist group. Ms. Markham calls the water protectors ‘insurgents.’ They’re always talking at the office about ‘jihad.’ It’s wild.”

  Aroostine knitted her eyebrows together and wondered whether Roxanne Markham had ever heard of the First Amendment.

  “Okay, we’ll get back to this background stuff. Just tell me what happened on Saturday.”

  Dahlia exhaled loudly. “So Mr. Swanson looks kind of young. Like a farm boy, you know? He’s got the blue eyes and blond hair and he looks like he’s never eaten anything but corn, beef, and potatoes. Sometimes Ms. Markham would send him down to Sioux Falls College to go to meetings on campus. He kind of fit in.”

  The flyer hanging in the lobby of Dahlia’s old dorm flashed in Aroostine’s mind. Rally to support the Water Protectors and protest the police state tactics of mercenaries like the Bedrock Force.

  “He passed himself off as a supporter of the protesters?”

  “Yeah. But the scene at the college was pretty mild; the real action was in Vermillion. Someone at a rally had told him something big was going down at the Vermillion camp over the weekend. So, between his intel and the chatter DHS had picked up, Ms. Markham decided we had to infiltrate the water protectors’ camp.”

  “And Swanson didn’t have an in with the water protectors,” Aroostine said.

  “Right. And they weren’t going to be as easy to fool as a bunch of college kids. So ….”

  “So they sent you in.” Even as she said it, Aroostine couldn’t believe Bedrock Force had done something so risky.

  Dahlia wasn’t a military veteran. She had no law enforcement training. She was just a kid. And they sent her to do undercover work.

  “Ms. Markham told me I didn’t have to do it. But she said I was the only one who might pass because … because I looked the part.”

  “Because you’re Lakota.”

  “Yeah.” Dahlia clenched her jaw.

  “She told me Mr. Swanson would be with me the whole time. Like, they really just needed me to make him seem legit. I was supposed to say he was my boyfriend. Which, gross. But I wanted to do it. It sounded important.” She punched her fist into her thigh.

  “Dahlia, tell me what happened.” She kept her eyes on the road as she encouraged the girl.

  She didn’t want to miss the turn. They couldn’t go back to the apartment, so she was driving to Falls Park. It seemed as good a place as any.

  “Mr. Swanson drove us in this old VW hippie van they sometimes use for surveillance. He gave me a little digital recorder in a woven bag. He told me to carry the bag all the time. He was afraid they’d search him, but he thought they’d give me a pass.” Her voice broke.

  “But they didn’t, did they?”

  She shook her head. “When we first got there, it seemed like the plan might work. The water protectors were really happy to see me. They accepted me right away. I introduced Mr. Swanson around as my boyfriend, and nobody questioned it. We were sitting in this clearing in the woods. There was a drum circle. A couple people had their kids there. After a while, a group of students came over from the university with, like, cookies and bottled waters to hand out.”

  “So what happened?”

  “One of the Vermillion students was a girl named Mercy Locklear. Somebody introduced us because she was Lakota, too, from the Rosebud Tribe. She was really nice. We started talking, just the way you do sometimes when you hit it off with somebody right away. Mr. Swanson pulled me aside and said to get her alone and gain her confidence. He thought I could get her to tell me the plans. Because nobody in the circle was really talking about it, and he was getting impatient.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah, for what it was worth. The big scary plan wasn’t really sabotage, anyway. They were going to spray-paint ‘Mother Earth Murderers’ on an exposed section of the pipe. Like, that was it.” Her voice was bitter.

  “You recorded it, right?”

  “Yeah. I thought, okay, great. We got what he needs; let’s get out of here. But then …. Mercy and I were off in the woods, sitting on a fallen tree. I didn’t know this then, but Mr. Swanson was hiding in the trees nearby, watching us. Mercy told me about the graffiti, and then I started to wrap up the conversation so I could find him and leave. Then, out of nowhere, she decides we should mark the beginning of our friendship by exchanging gifts. She was wearing this pretty purple and gold scarf, it was all flowy and light. She unwound it from around her neck and handed it to me. I didn’t have anything to give her—except the woven bag.”

  Aroostine saw where this story was headed, but she just nodded and let the girl continue.

  Dahlia took a shaky breath. “She reached for it, and I kind of reacted, you know? I pulled back, the bag fell open, and she saw the recorder. She started to freak out. Yelling about how I was a mole and a traitor to the Nation. She was really upset. And loud. I just knew the others would come running from the clearing any minute. I tried to get her to just calm down, but she wouldn’t. And then … Mr. Swanson shot her.”

  “He shot her.”

  “Through the throat. He said she’d made me and we needed to protect the mission. I started screaming. There was blood everywhere. He clamped his hand over my mouth and dragged me away.”

  “And Mercy?”

  “We left her there. Just left her.”

  “She died?”

  Dahlia nodded. “By the time the protesters found her, we were halfway back here. Mr. Swanson made me erase the recording while we were driving back. I don’t know what exactly he told Ms. Markham about how it went down. But they told me reports had gone through the appropriate channels and Bedrock Force had been cleared of culpability.”

  “But nobody even knew you were from Bedrock Force. How could they clear the company if they didn’t know you were there?”

  “We also provide security and monitoring. Like, guys in uniforms with guns. They aren’t authorized to break up the camp or anything. Really, they’re just there to intimidate the activists. When the protesters found Mercy’s body, they immediately accused the security force of killing her. But all their guns were checked and stuff, and nobody had fired their weapons … So, it all got swept under the rug.”

  “But you couldn’t live with that.”

  “No. And I couldn’t talk to my mom.
I just couldn’t. I knew I’d tell her what happened, so I stopped calling home. My head was—is—all messed up. I started staying late to go through Ms. Markham’s papers to find something, anything, to prove Mr. Swanson killed Mercy. And now, here we are.” She bent her head. Aroostine saw the tears start to fall.

  “Here. Unless your eyeliner is waterproof, you’re gonna need this.” Aroostine took one hand off the steering wheel to pass Dahlia a tissue.

  At that moment, she looked up and saw the green Jeep filling her rearview mirror. A heartbeat later, it smacked into them. She slammed on the brakes as the truck careened forward straight toward a concrete warehouse wall in three, two … she yanked the wheel to the left and they spun around. The rear quarter panel of the truck bed glanced off the wall, and the pickup came to rest on the sidewalk in front of the warehouse.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Dahlia reached up and adjusted her wig with shaking hands.

  The guy from the Jeep walked toward them with his cell phone in his hand and a fake apologetic smile splashed across his face.

  25

  “You did what?” Roxanne hoped she’d misheard him, but she knew full well she hadn’t.

  “I rear-ended them. She was headed to the park. I’m not getting lured into an ambush situation, but I didn’t want to let her get away. It’s okay. I’ve got a plan. I gotta go. Talk to you later.” Arnetto was speaking barely above a whisper. She could hear his shoes hitting the pavement.

  “Do not even think about hanging up on me. What’s your plan?”

  He cursed under his breath, but she could tell he’d stopped walking. “Fine. I’m going to apologize, tell them it’s all my fault, and then insist we call the police to come take a report for insurance purposes. By the way, I’ll be putting in a repair requisition with my expenses.”

  “Whatever, Arnetto. Continue.”

  “If Rue Jackman is who she says she is, she’ll have no problem waiting. And we’ll find out who her friend is.”