The Perfect Outsider

by Loreth Anne White

  Before she’d vanished, Lacy had written some words on a notepad in the coffee shop and then ripped off the page. However, the imprint of her words had remained on the pad. They’d read: “Black rock sentinel, west flank @ 7:00 p.m.”

  Police Chief Bo Fargo’s men had found the notepad, and Fargo had reported the find to Samuel.

  He cut right to the point. “Are you sure your men were waiting at the right location?”

  The smile on Rufus’s face faded.

  “It’s the only big black rock on the west flank that could be called a sentinel. Lacy never arrived. My men found her around 1:00 a.m. She was screaming at a stranger in the woods but fled as my guys approached. The stranger fired on my guys. One of his bullets hit Jason Barnes in the neck. Lumpy Smithers returned fire. He thinks he hit him because he fell down into a ravine.”

  “Thinks he hit him?”

  Rufus remained silent.

  Samuel smiled benignly. “Did they look for him?”

  “Lumpy made the decision to bring Jason into the hospital right away—he was hurt bad.”

  Samuel inhaled, slowly. “I presume they got a good look at this stranger’s face?”

  “No, they did not—”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rufus moistened his lips.

  “It was dark, raining,” he said. “The situation was fluid. Lumpy returned to the site where the man had gone down the ravine, but there was no one there.”

  “So the Matthews woman escaped, and so did this unidentified stranger?”

  Rufus cleared his throat. “We do have his backpack—he dropped it.”

  “Any ID in it?”

  “No.” Rufus eyed the water on Samuel’s desk. “The pack contained food, maps, survival blanket, tent, sleeping bag—he appears to have been on an extended hike through the wilderness. But no ID.”

  Samuel opened the bottle of water on his desk as he spoke, poured a glass, then sipped without offering any to Rufus. “The priority was to get the woman and her twins, not Jason Barnes,” he said calmly.

  Rufus met his gaze. “Jason’s condition was critical.”

  “Damn!” Samuel slammed his glass down. “Jason’s not likely going to make it out of ICU, anyway. He’s going to die, and the woman got away! Get back out there, find her!”

  “We’re looking. One of the kids’ shoes was found on the east flank of the mountain,” said Rufus. “We have police and SAR crews combing that area.”

  “The rock sentinel is on the west flank, and you said your men saw her on that west flank at 1:00 a.m. How do you explain the kid’s shoe on the east side?”

  “Maybe she fled in that direction.”

  “Get back out onto the west side with a search party of your own. I want that woman, and I want that stranger. Dead or alive. And keep it quiet that you’re looking on that side, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mayor Rufus Kittridge did not look a happy man.

  “And what about Molly Rigg? What happened to our damn mole!”

  Rufus smoothed his hand over his hair. “We’re still waiting for contact.”

  Samuel abruptly turned his back on Rufus and stared out the window. It was the mayor’s cue to leave.

  But as Rufus reached the thick oak door, Samuel said suddenly, “Who found the red shoe on the east flank?”

  “June Farrow and her K9.”

  He did not turn around to face the mayor. “Is she there with the search party now?”

  “I would assume so.”

  Rufus Kittridge exited and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Samuel stared into the street. Smiling people walked the sidewalk, greeting each other with respectability. They were his people, it was his town, and it was a clean one—nothing like it had been five years ago before he’d run the drunks and cowboys out.

  These people had a lot to thank him for, and he was not going to see a group of renegades taking him down. He made a mental note to ask Fargo about June Farrow and the red shoe.

  June attended most of his motivational seminars, but she was not yet a full Devotee. It was time she came to a personal consultation. He wanted to get inside Ms. Farrow’s pretty red head—she was a dark horse, newish in town. Samuel didn’t feel he knew her well enough.

  He glanced at his gold designer watch. It was time for his specially scheduled seminar entitled How to Identify the Enemy Within and Stop It from Sabotaging Efforts to Be the Best You.

  * * *

  June raced up the bank to where Bo Fargo and the SAR team had set up command. Fargo was talking to one of the volunteers under a temporary awning where maps, a coffee urn and radios littered a portable table. It was spitting rain again, more big black clouds rolling in over the mountains.

  Fargo caught sight of June and turned to face her as she approached.

  He was a big and imposing man in his fifties who’d been widowed mysteriously some years ago.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, his watery blue gaze running over her.

  “I’m sorry, Bo,” she said, breathless. “Eager was bitten by something yesterday and I had to take him to the vet over in the next town.”

  “Bitten?”

  “I don’t know what got him. He swelled right up. He couldn’t breathe. I administered antihistamine but he just got worse—”

  “Your truck was still at Hannah’s place.”

  So he’d been to look. This was not good.

  “I was too stressed to drive. I got a ride from Hannah.”

  “What’s wrong with the vet in Cold Plains?”

  “The local vet and I have had—” She inhaled, her brain racing. “Look, it’s personal, Bo.”

  “How so?”

  June reminded herself Fargo was a Devotee, one of Samuel Grayson’s main men. Everyone was supposed to get along happy-happy in this smiling facade of a town, and it was making her so damn tired and angry.

  “The vet and I have different perspectives on treatment,” she said quietly. “But it’s not something we can’t work out as we move forward. In fact, I’m going to go around and see him again later, because it’s so much easier keeping all our business in town.” June forced a smile. “I learned that the hard way last night. The vet in the town over is not all he’s cracked up to be, either.”

  “Who is he? Which town?”

  She glanced at her watch. “Look, Bo, I really need to get to this special seminar Samuel is putting on.” She met his gaze. “I got a serious shock with Eager and I could do with some motivational bolstering right now. Since I don’t have my dog with me, can you manage today’s search without us, while I go sit in on the seminar?”

  Bo Fargo studied her. She knew she looked like a wreck.

  “I’ve been in a state,” she said for emphasis.

  “How’s the dog now?”

  “He’s going to be okay. Vet is keeping him overnight to be sure.”

  His watery eyes narrowed—he wasn’t totally buying her story. She was on thin ice here.

  “I’m beat, Bo. I just—”

  “Go,” he said. “Leave things to us.”

  She took the gap and rushed off, feeling his eyes burning into her back as she went. He was going to put her under a microscope for sure now. It was just a matter of time before he found something.

  “Samuel will be pleased to see you!” Fargo yelled behind her.

  June hesitated at something in his tone, then decided not to look back as she hurried toward her truck.

  * * *

  June slipped quietly into the back of the community- center auditorium. She was a few minutes late, and the audience was already being held rapt by the charismatic man striding across the stage as he spoke—no one even glanced her way as she quietly opened the back door. But Samuel noticed her entrance. He stopped on the stage and smiled, as if right at her.

  June felt a little punch to the chest.

  She nodded her head and smiled back, hatred filling her body. But she needed to put in an emergen
cy appearance to shore up her cover with Samuel. Her facade had started to slip—the stakes were death.

  This was Jesse’s fault, she thought as she edged along the crowded back row of the auditorium and took a vacant seat, her heart racing.

  “When you become the best you that you can be—” Samuel was saying into his mike “—it can arouse feelings of envy and inadequacy in others who have not yet attained this change for themselves.”

  He stilled, faced the audience. Silence hung. The audience, almost imperceptibly, leaned forward.

  The lights dimmed slightly, while a single spot simultaneously brightened on Samuel. His hair seemed to shine, his shirt turn whiter. His eyes appeared to dance.

  He was a true master of subliminal effect, thought June—the bastard.

  “We’re reformers, all of us here,” he said with a wide sweep of his tanned and muscled arm. “We have found a new way of seeing the world. But—” He paused, seeming to meet each Devotee’s gaze individually.

  “Reformers by their very nature are defined by their adversaries, who feel threatened by the change in status quo—they want to tear down the very houses we build!” His voice rose, and he himself seemed to grow in stature. “They want to break down our community!”

  Heads in the audience nodded and there were murmurs of assent.

  “And it’s appropriate that these adversaries be identified, and the truth of them be told! Our foes are many and they include corrupt and abusive federal officials.”

  He was referring to the FBI, thought June, Hawk in particular.

  Samuel strode smoothly, deliberately, to the other end of the stage, as if pondering something very grave and heavy indeed. “Our foes include corporations, and they include groups who disguise themselves by offering to help Devotees ‘escape’ the perfection we have created here.”

  June felt her face warm. She focused intensely on not showing any further outward reaction, but she feared that somehow Samuel had already seen something change in her, even from where he stood.

  Don’t be ridiculous, June. You’re giving him the same power these Devotees have given him.

  “These incompetent organizations are filled with even more incompetent individuals who want to tear each and every one of you away from the wonderful thing we have built right here, in Cold Plains, Wyoming! Our home!”

  Samuel reached for a bottle of Cold Plains water on the podium. The water seemed to sparkle in the spotlight. He poured a glass, set the bottle down.

  “These enemies,” he said somberly, “also hide among us, I’m afraid. They could be our neighbors.” He watched the audience carefully. “They could wear the guise of friends. They could even be members of our own families. And the closer they are to us—” he held up his hand “—the more dangerous they are to our well-being. We must oust them, each and every one, and they must be cast from our souls and our town!”

  June’s hands tightened in her lap—he was starting a bloody witch hunt! McCarthyism was going to have nothing on this guy, and she was in his crosshairs.

  * * *

  It was dark and still raining by the time June returned to the cave house in the mountains. She was beat, her emotions simmering far too close to the surface. She hugged Eager tightly and put her face in his fur. His doggie scent, his soft Labrador ears, his delight in seeing her always grounded June.

  After she’d showered quickly and changed, she went to the kitchen to feed Eager and prepare a meal for her captive. Guilt gnawed at her.

  Before returning to the cave house, June had checked in on Hannah, who seemed to think their cover was still intact. But they were all on edge now. June had also tried to call Hawk Bledsoe, but the FBI agent’s voice mail said he was out of town.

  June had then driven out to the ranch where Hawk stayed with his new wife, Carly, and Carly’s sister Mia. Carly had informed her that Hawk had flown back to the D.C. field office and would be gone for a few days. She suggested June go to the other FBI agents at their cabin in the woods. But it was Hawk June trusted, and it was his input she wanted. June decided she’d think on it until morning. Until then, Jesse was her responsibility, and it weighed heavily upon her.

  She’d heard no rumors in town about a missing male, and after what Lacy had described, and what June had seen on Jesse’s GPS, plus the freshness of his tattoo, she was becoming increasingly convinced that he was not one of Samuel’s men.

  Then again, after hearing Samuel’s seminar today, June wouldn’t put it past him to try to get a mole into their safe-house system. With eleven of his Devotees suddenly missing now, Samuel knew something was going down. And June couldn’t rule out the possibility Jesse could be Samuel’s mole, and that he’d been sent in over the north mountains with a fresh tattoo as some kind of ruse.

  * * *

  Carrying the tray of food and some clean clothes, June took a deep breath as Brad, who’d taken over the guard position from Molly, unlocked the bedroom door for her.

  She entered and he locked the door behind her.

  Jesse was reclined on the bed, shirt off, and he was reading a book. He glanced up. Nerves bit at her.

  He made her room seem small, intimate, warm. He made her feel ridiculously feminine. And the partial nakedness of his body, the casualness with which he relaxed in her space, made her ache suddenly for a once-familiar feeling of having a lover, a partner. Someone, just sometimes, she could lean on. A team. As she’d once, so long ago now, been with Matt.

  This vignette, irrespective of who he was or where he’d come from, just drove home how lonely June really was.

  “It got a bit hot in here.” He closed the book, sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Some fresh air would be nice.”

  She cleared her throat and approached the bed. “I brought you some clean clothes and some supper,” she said, setting the tray on the table. The neatly folded jeans, socks, shirt and underwear she placed in a pile on the bed beside him. His belt lay atop the pile.

  He stared at the buckle—the bronze letters: Jesse. A strange look crossed his face.

  June dug into her jeans pocket and handed him his watch.

  “I took it off when I stitched you up.”

  He looked up into her eyes, and she felt a jolt of electrical energy.

  “So now I’m allowed to know what day it is, even if I can’t see daylight?”

  June swallowed, still holding the watch out to him. “I’m sorry, Jesse. It’s only…for a short while.”

  “What’re you waiting for? The feds to arrive?”

  “You really that afraid of law enforcement?”

  Slowly, he reached up, took his watch from her hands. His skin brushed hers as he did. His hand was warm, rough, and the touch sent a wave of goose bumps chasing up her arm. Then suddenly, he grabbed her wrist.

  And before she could even think, he had her Glock out of her holster with his other hand.

  June cursed her stupidity as panic licked through her stomach.

  “June,” he said quietly as clicked off the safety, his eyes intense, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to get out of here.”

  Chapter 5

  Jesse could see the fear and anger in her eyes—fear he’d put there.

  “I should have known better than to trust you.” Her voice was hoarse.

  He could smell her shampoo—she’d just had a shower, and her hair was drying in loose waves over her shoulders; it looked like it did in the photograph on the dresser. She was wearing a soft blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt over a white T-shirt and her narrow jeans were tucked into Ugg boots. Not an ounce of makeup adorned her finely boned features. Apart from the angry flush in her cheeks now, she looked tired.

  Compassion mushroomed softly in his chest.

  “I need to go to Cold Plains,” he said quietly. “I need to find Samuel Grayson.”

  She swallowed, her gaze flicking to the gun. “Why?”

  “Because it might help me figure out why I came here.”
r />   “Maybe you’re his mole,” she said.

  “Why would I be wanting to leave, then?”

  She was silent for several beats. “I don’t know. Samuel is a sociopathic con artist, a master at mental games. Perhaps he sent you in over the mountains to play one of those mental games with me.”

  “I don’t think so, June.”

  “Maybe you don’t know so.” Her features were tight. “Maybe your amnesia is genuine—you did get a knock on the head. And you could regain your memory, recall why you’re here and then hurt the people I’m trying to save.”

  Jesse got up suddenly and she tensed. He went to the dresser and put the loaded gun on top, then he put on his watch. He walked over to the chair where she’d set the pile of clothes and pulled a fresh white T-shirt over his head.

  “I see you found some jeans my size,” he said, taking off his track pants.

  Her gaze darted between him and the gun on the dresser as he pulled on the jeans and put on his belt. The anger spots high on her cheekbones darkened and confusion crept into her eyes. Be damned if it didn’t make her sexier.

  “What’re you doing?” she said.

  “Getting dressed.”

  She hesitated, then edged toward the dresser, picked up the gun, turned to face him. “Why’d you do that?”

  She was shaking slightly.

  “Because I can, June. I wanted to show you that I can overpower you if I want to. I can hurt people if I choose to.” He faced her squarely. “I wanted to prove to you that even when the situation is in my control, I won’t hurt you, or anyone else in this house.”

  She moistened her lips. He could see conflict in her features, and Jesse had an absurd desire to hold her, comfort her, tell her she should get some rest from saving the world.

  “Maybe it’s just part of your mind game,” she said coolly, holstering her weapon.

  “Not going to keep the gun pointed at me?”

  “There’s a loaded twelve-gauge outside that door.” She jerked her chin toward the door. “I just have to scream.”

  He smiled. “You trust me now, even just a little.”

  “I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.”

  “But you’ll let me out.”

  She said nothing.