The Shadow Tracer

by Mg Gardiner

  She had thought she’d slipped up at the barn—that she hadn’t been careful enough, and because of that the FBI and sheriffs had found them in the middle of nowhere. But now she knew: This was not about how careful she was.

  She could never be careful enough. Not with the Worthes on her tail. Not with the FBI after her.

  She watched the white lines slip past, leading her nowhere.

  In the living room of the trailer, the twin babies squalled. Their mother walked up and down the carpet, one on each hip, trying to shush them. Fell thought the noise would drive her mad.

  “Grissom, want to get them to shut up?”

  He was standing in the doorway, sweaty, a silhouette that stank. His Smith & Wesson gleamed in the light from the kitchen.

  “Mind at least shutting the door?” Fell added.

  He shuffled away, pulling the door closed behind him.

  On the bed in the cold bedroom, Reavy lay panting. “Get to it.”

  Fell ripped open the roll of gauze and set it on the nightstand beside the tweezers and the X-acto knife. She’d given Reavy two Valium to numb the pain. Her sister was bleeding from a gunshot wound to her hip.

  “Pray to God or curse the bastards and bitch to kingdom come,” Fell said. “Just don’t scream.”

  Reavy’s hair was matted with sweat and she was shaking. But the bullet hadn’t gone deep, hadn’t hit anything vital. It had ricocheted off the rivet in her jeans. Fell could see it lodged beneath her skin, in the big muscles along her flank.

  This place belonged to their Worthe cousins, Jadom and Lolly. The two were nineteen and had four kids, which worried Fell, because little eyes came with little mouths and the urge to talk. But for tonight they were safe in this trailer in the mountains east of Ruidoso. Jadom and Lolly worked in the business. He cooked. She minded the home and handled the finances, ran a payroll service for family members who were less successful.

  No, Jadom and Lolly wouldn’t talk. The Shattering Angel was standing in their living room. World without end, fiery wings alight, amen.

  “Stay quiet.”

  She jabbed the X-acto knife into the wound on Reavy’s side, deep enough to see the bullet. Reavy breathed hard, like a weight lifter. Blood swelled a bright and healthy red all around it, spilling across her sister’s haunches. With the tweezers, Fell dug the bullet out.

  She held it up. “Prize of the night, girl.”

  Reavy held out her hand. Fell dropped the round into her palm.

  “This is not the prize. Zoe is,” Reavy said. “Keller has no right. Zoe isn’t hers.”

  Fell threaded a needle and began to stitch. “No. She’s not.”

  “She’s been blessed. She’s a Worthe.”

  Fell worked the needle. “If you want Zoe—”

  “You don’t. You want the chip.”

  “If you want her,” Fell continued, “don’t ask permission. Get her. Own this.”

  Reavy pressed her lips tight. She blinked and looked at the closed door.

  Fell said, “If we rescue Zoe, we’re heroes. You bring her home in your arms, Isom has to let you keep her. So get her. Claim her. Then maybe Grissom’ll make you his full wife. Maybe not.”

  “I’m not gonna have kids any other way. I got to.”

  Fell finished stitching. She knotted and cut the thread. “Nobody knows and I’m not telling.”

  “I haven’t had kids. That’s telling.”

  Chlamydia, or the abortion—one or the other had probably left Reavy infertile. God had punished her. And unless she got a kid some way, the family would punish her too. Fell brushed her sister’s damp hair back from her face. Reavy reached up and touched a finger to the locket that hung from the chain around Fell’s neck. It glowed in the dim light.

  “Creek,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Reavy fingered the locket, but said nothing else. Nobody ever did. The only person in the family who’d spoken one word about it was Nolan, right before he took off for California. Murmuring to her: “Ain’t fair. Taking a kid. Ain’t right.”

  Fell got up from Reavy’s side and opened the door. “Grissom.”

  The view into the living room was chaotic. The babies shrieked. Jadom sat at the kitchen table, playing solitaire, his wispy mustache looking verminous. Lolly walked back and forth, eyeing Grissom with undisguised fear.

  Grissom came into the bedroom. “Done?”

  Reavy held up the bullet. “Gonna pay back the bastards twice and then some. The bitch too.”

  “Amen,” he said.

  Fell wiped her hands on a dish towel. “We can stay here tonight, but only to let Reavy rest. We need to put out the word to everybody we’ve got, within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

  “You think Sarah Keller’s gonna get that far on foot, after all she’s been through? And with a five-year-old? Don’t think so,” Grissom said.

  “You didn’t see her disappear,” Fell said.

  Reavy lifted her head. “I did. She got in a truck. She’s got help.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m shot, Grissom, not blind. And not stupid.”

  He walked over to her then and stared at the stitches. With his thumb he pressed down on the wound.

  “You shall not speak thus to your lord husband, girl.”

  Reavy breathed heavily, staring at the wall. In the living room, Lolly stopped and stared. Fell stood with bunched bloody rags and the X-acto knife in her hand.

  Grissom turned to her. “Nothing to say?” He waited, daring her to step out of line. When she didn’t, he said, “Where’d Keller go?”

  Reavy looked up, her eyes deadly. “West. I saw Sarah Keller get in a pickup truck headed west.”

  He looked at her for a second. “First light, that’s the direction we head. And we watch the news. Reporters will be sniffing around the Rio Sacado Sheriff’s Station like dogs.”

  Fell took the rest of the rags and bunched them up. She would need to burn them, but for now she held them like badges of honor. “I was ready to stay and finish off the FBI man. You’re the one who said to pull back.”

  “Because Keller was gone. That’s twice you’ve let her escape.”

  He watched Fell’s face. Slowly she wiped the blood from the X-acto knife. She sheathed it and slipped it into her back pocket.

  “They won’t get away,” she said.

  Grissom loved his own life. He cared less about hers, or Reavy’s. In the 60-watt trailer light, she saw him anew. The sleepy eyes and bad boy lips, the ripped body, the eager fists. Protector, enforcer, user. He only cared about the angel’s wings because they supported him. Fair enough. Let him think he was the center of God’s own whirlpool of blood. She tucked her locket inside her shirt.

  “They won’t get away. I’ll die before that happens,” she said, and Grissom smiled. As he always did when somebody mentioned death.

  55

  Under the morning sun, the ruined Rio Sacado Sheriff’s Station smoldered. It stank of charred wood and burned plastic and worse. Inside, forensics techs walked the grid, white bodysuits ghostly amid fallen slabs of the roof and twisted girders. The county sheriff prowled the parking lot, a grizzly ready to rip her long claws into whoever had killed her men.

  Harker stood inside the yellow tape in yesterday’s suit and shirt and tie. Two FBI special agents from the Albuquerque office flanked him. One murmured into his phone, describing the scene. The other took photos and notes and tried to keep from looking at Harker.

  Harker pressed his lips together tightly. They would convene an inquiry into the attack on the station. They’d interrogate him and question his tactics. They would lose sight of what mattered. Deputies, dead. Special Agent Marichal, dead.

  Dizziness swam through him, with a sound like waves breaking on a beach. Fatigue and adrenaline depletion, he figured. Maybe the sun. When he looked at the station, it hit his eyes. He turned sideways to avoid it.

  The sheriff walked over, her boots kicking shrapnel
from the UFO Tours van. She was in uniform. That was a signal—solidarity. In one night she had lost three men, more than the department had lost in the previous century. Harker realized he didn’t know the deputies’ names.

  “How did they know the Keller girl was here?” she said.

  “Not from me,” he said.

  “You brought this operation into Chaves County, Special Agent Harker.”

  He straightened. “Sarah Keller brought this into Chaves County, Sheriff. And she dragged the Worthe clan with her, into Roswell and to Rio Sacado. I’ve been in pursuit, trying to stop it.”

  He eyed the station, briefly, the dizzy sensation lurking. “But somebody let the word leak. And the Worthes attacked.”

  “Somebody,” the sheriff said.

  “Not I.”

  The sheriff’s tone cut through the reticence of the other two FBI agents. They put away their phones and shouldered up beside him.

  Harker said, “I was in secure communication with the Bureau in Roswell, Albuquerque, and in D.C. Repeat: secure. It’s impossible that information leaked to the Worthes from our end.” He set his hands on his hips. “But Roswell law enforcement broadcast information over the radio from the first moment Sarah Keller was spotted at the music festival.”

  “You’re saying my department led the killers to Rio Sacado?” Her voice was sharp. “Do you understand what’s going on here?”

  “Do you?” Abruptly the dizziness receded. “This morning an elderly Roswell man crawled out of his house and flagged down a neighbor, saying his wife was duct-taped to a chair in their kitchen. The Worthes had held them hostage while they tried to figure out what local law enforcement was up to. Do you record your police band comms? I’d listen in, and see who was talking too much. Names, places, times—God knows what they gave away in open communication.”

  One of the Albuquerque agents, the murmuring phone guy, said, “The SWAT team was pulled back before completion of the operation as well.”

  She turned on him. “Don’t. Do not.”

  “We need to call in FBI tactical? That’s the way it’s looking now.”

  Harker held up a hand. “We need firepower. We need broad-brush authority. We need to attack this from every angle. We have to get these people.”

  He touched his hand to the wallet near his heart. “The Worthes are not going to slink away. This was a skirmish. They’ve seen their prize and they know it’s close. They will redouble their efforts to seize it.”

  “It,” the sheriff said.

  “Zoe Keller,” he said. “The clan knows this is their chance to grab her. Believe me, they’re close by. They have extended family scattered around New Mexico like poisonous weeds. They’re holed up, preparing to take another crack at the child.” He tightened his tie. “Which is why it’s critical to apprehend Sarah Keller.”

  “We have conflicting reports on whether she has, in fact, abducted the girl. Oklahoma City sent us a report—”

  “Sarah Keller is a fugitive. Following her lawful arrest last night, she escaped from the custody of the Chaves County Sheriff’s Department. She broke out of this station and ran, taking a minor child with her. And she is risking the child’s life.”

  He nodded at the desert. “She took a five-year-old out there, knowing full well that the Worthes are in pursuit. That’s so reckless it’s homicidal,” he said. “If she’s not actually working with them. This could all have been a ploy.”

  The sheriff looked incredulous. “You’re suggesting that Sarah Keller let you arrest her, so that SWAT and the FBI and my deputies would all be gathered in one place—a big fat target?”

  “They’re cop killers. Ambushers. When they bombed the Denver courthouse, Reavy Worthe dropped the improvised bomb and strolled into the building to get away. It’s all distraction, misdirection. They’re masters. They pull people in, Sheriff.”

  “That sounds far-fetched,” the sheriff said.

  “Sarah Keller’s spent the past five years playing cat and mouse with the authorities, and now she’s bolted, leaving a trail of destruction across your state. She’s armed, she’s dangerous, and God knows who she’s going to get killed next. We’re going to bring her in.”

  He held the sheriff’s stare. She said nothing. He turned to the Albuquerque agents.

  “Come with me.”

  They followed.

  The truck stop was nearly empty, a diner and gas station sixty years old, straight out of a James Dean movie. Standing outside, Lawless watched the morning sun crest the mountains, gold through the dark boughs of the pine forest. He tried again to contact Sarah. Her phone just rang. He left another voice-mail message.

  “Me again. Get in touch. Please.”

  He hung up. He wondered where she was. Whether Zoe was holding it together even a little bit. He raised the paper coffee cup to his mouth, but couldn’t manage a swallow.

  He felt desperate to explain. He knew she would flay his hide. He deserved it.

  The sky was a cloudless blue, empty and scoured, promising heat. He felt none of it. He might as well still be in the snowy woods where he had first seen Sarah Keller. He might as well never have left that forest.

  At first, he’d thought it had just been a deadly day in a career that unavoidably took him into violent situations. He thought that day would fade.

  Why, he couldn’t imagine now.

  When he first drove up that mountain road and saw an empty SUV parked in Beth’s driveway, doors open, engine running, he knew things were wrong. When he rushed silently through the forest toward the house, heard muffled shouts and saw Nolan—Nolan, who he was supposed to extract—confronting the woman he thought was Beth, he knew he was in a shit show.

  He had moved toward them, but the pair ran and Lawless lost sight of them. Then, beneath the crackle and snap of the fire, he heard a gunshot. A minute later the woman ran raggedly into his path, clutching the baby. Her face was Beth’s and not quite. It was younger, more beautiful, incredibly frightened and nearly homicidal.

  Behind her, Nolan lay facedown in the snow.

  And he took her arm and said, “Run.”

  She clutched the baby and raced beside him through the trees, toward the switchback where she had parked her truck.

  “He tried to kill me,” she said.

  Her voice was shaking. Her hands were shaking. Where her jacket hung open at the collar, red marks ringed her throat—Nolan’s handprint.

  “They’re coming,” she said. “The clan.”

  The way she said it, four simple words, chilled him beyond measure.

  When they reached the switchback, he helped her buckle the baby in the truck, and turned to pursue the Worthes. But Sarah thought he was about to go collect evidence against her. She opened the truck door and said, “No.”

  He shut it. “Your job is to protect the baby. Mine is to apprehend the Worthes. You want to have any chance of stopping them? Trust me.”

  She looked at him. “Who are you?”

  “Michael Lawless.”

  She held his gaze a moment, seeming to memorize not just his name but his face, his bearing, the frost swirling in the air around him, fixing him in her mind.

  Then she spun the tires and drove away.

  Telling her to run was a snap decision. She said she’d acted in self-defense and, given the circumstances, he was willing to accept her at her word. What wasn’t in doubt was the imminent danger. Sarah needed to save the baby.

  The truck faded to a faint gray form in the snow, as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke. He heard the distant crackle of flames. By the time he ran back through the pines, the cabin was a screaming streak of red fire. He knelt beside Nolan’s body, weapon drawn, listening for the clan, the Worthes, and their Shattering Angel. Almost a single organism. One that killed.

  Nolan Worthe was not one of them. He had accepted the FBI’s offer to become a confidential informant. The clan might be a pathogen, but Nolan had agreed to become a virus within, and betray them.

>   The results lay before him, covered with dusty snow, still and cold in a pool of blood.

  He called for backup. Then he put his fingers against Nolan’s neck to confirm that he had no pulse, looking at his watch to fix the time.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He rolled Nolan onto his back. Nolan breathed and opened his eyes.

  He said, “Sarah shot me.”

  “I know,” Lawless said. “How’d that happen?”

  Nolan didn’t answer. He said, “Beth?”

  Lawless shook his head.

  Nolan’s face crumpled.

  By then there was no sign of the Worthes, aside from tire tracks on the driveway. They had fled. A team from the Marshals Service quietly evacuated Nolan to San Jose and got him hospitalized under an alias. To the Marshals it quickly became apparent what had happened: Nolan had been sloppy, and Harker’s FBI operation flawed. The Worthes had never been convinced by Nolan’s sudden conversion. So they came after him, planning to kill him and Beth, and take Zoe.

  But Nolan was going to survive, and would have to live with the consequences. What a sour lemon of a prize.

  Lawless drove to Sarah’s apartment to tell her. A minute after he got there, two other deputy marshals showed up and called him outside. They had his supervisor on the phone. Instead of Lawless telling Sarah the good news, they told Lawless how it was going to be.

  Let Nolan be declared missing.

  “It’s the only way,” his supervisor said.

  It was, in fact, almost perfect. Beth was dead. The baby was taken care of. There were no messy issues to worry about.

  “You mean, lie to Sarah? Let her think she killed him?” Lawless said, disbelieving.

  “She can’t know. If anyone discovers Nolan’s alive, he’s done. You might as well put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.”

  It was WITSec logic. The only way to save Nolan’s life was to let Sarah and the clan believe he was dead. And if Sarah ever broke down and confessed to shooting him, her confession would serve to bolster his cover.

  Lawless climbed the stairs back to Sarah’s apartment.

  He followed the rules that day. He wore the star. He carried out the mission.