by Paula Graves
One of the mysteries of the Swains’ criminal enterprise, to Scanlon at least, was where the money actually went. No telling how much drug cash the family laundered through the feed store every year, yet the place was as shabby as any general store a man might find in any tiny Southern hamlet. The tile floors were clean but worn, the painted metal shelves chipped and warped in more places than not.
Scanlon wished he dared go to the back room for a look, but he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t being watched. Hell, Addie might have stationed one of her boys in the back room to catch him in the act if he had a mind to go snooping.
This was a test. One he had to pass to get any deeper into the family business. So he had to keep his nose clean.
Still, by the time a half hour had passed, boredom was beginning to set in with a vengeance. He decided to leave the narrow confines of the cashier’s counter and walk up and down the feed store’s aisles to work off some of his restless energy.
He had just turned up the goat feed aisle when saw that he was no longer alone in the store. Three men stood silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the brilliant daylight. Scanlon had to walk all the way up to where they stood before he could make out any features. What he saw when he reached the front made his pulse notch up a couple of levels.
Two of the men were Nolan Alvarez and Toby Lavelle, aka Norman Bayliss and Jeff Munroe, the SSU agents he’d met earlier in the woods by the river. The other man was more slight, with distinctly Asian features.
Kurasawa? Scanlon wondered.
“Addie Tolliver’s letting us drop off a shipment.” Alvarez didn’t even pretend to be the harmless fisherman he’d posed as the last time they’d met. “We’re supposed to store it in the back room.”
Was this part of the test, too? Scanlon weighed his options. If he used the handheld radio Addie had left with him to contact her, she might be mad as hell at being interrupted at the family party. But let these guys stash their goods in the back room without permission, and Addie would definitely see his presumption as a big black mark against him.
“Mrs. Tolliver didn’t mention you’d be coming,” he said, infusing his voice with doubt but not much curiosity. At their darkening expressions, he added, “I can call her up on the two-way, though.” He pulled the radio from his pocket and showed it to them. At Lavelle’s sharp gesture of command, Scanlon thumbed the talk button. “Mrs. Tolliver?”
A few seconds later, Addie Tolliver’s voice came over the radio, tight with annoyance. She had to speak over the bluegrass band’s toe-tapping rendition of “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” “This better be good, Mr. Shipley.”
Scanlon told her about the unexpected visitors and their request, taking care to play up his nervousness. If nothing else, it might make the SSU agents and the gunrunner drop their guard a bit. “Should I let them in?”
“I forgot to tell you they was coming,” Addie said, her tone utterly unconvincing. So he’d been right—this was part of the test. “Take them on into the back. They’re selling me some surplus stock from a store over in Perry, Georgia, that went belly up. Damned economy.”
“Okay, ma’am. I’ll take care of it.” Scanlon pocketed the radio and nodded to the men. “She said I should show you the way to the back.”
The two former SSU agents just smiled, but Kurasawa seemed annoyed. He complained about the delay to the two men in rapid-fire Spanish. His accent was definitely South American rather than Mexican, which lent more credence to Rick Cooper’s theory that this Kurasawa might be a Peruvian gunrunner. The size and shape of the boxes the three men unloaded from a flatbed truck parked outside—long, rectangular boxes that would be perfect for carrying rifles or even RPGs—rocket-propelled grenade launchers—only added more evidence to the theory.
The men seemed loath to leave him alone with their goods in the storeroom, but they finally left after pretending interest in the hardware section of the store. Scanlon tried not to react with relief, still aware he could be under surveillance.
The temptation to head back to the storeroom and see what, exactly, might be in those boxes was strong. But that was what Addie and the boys might expect a federal agent to do. Scanlon wasn’t a federal agent around here. He was Mark Shipley, a down-on-his-luck ex-vet looking for enough money to keep food on the table and a roof over his head, and not too particular about how that money ended up in his pocket.
What would Mark Shipley do? He’d keep his eyes averted and his mouth closed.
But it took every ounce of effort he possessed to stick close to the register until Addie Tolliver and her son Leamon returned near the end of the day.
Both of them were flushed and laughing, the day’s heat accounting for only a small amount of their pink cheeks and lifted moods. The smell of corn mash was strong on Leamon’s breath, especially.
He dropped a paper plate covered with plastic wrap on the counter. “Davy said he promised you some food to take home,” Leamon said, sounding a little peeved. “Wasn’t a whole lot left after everyone got through, but you ought to be able to get a nice meal out of that.”
Scanlon thanked him, ignoring Leamon’s grimace. He turned to Addie, who was swaying side to side as if listening to a reel in her head. “Mrs. Tolliver, I sure do thank you for the chance to work. You keep me in mind if you need someone to fill in again, you hear?”
Addie’s blue eyes slid into focus, settling on his face. “I reckon you’ll be wantin’ your pay now, too.” She went around to the cash register, swaying slightly on unsteady legs, and pulled a twenty out of the drawer. “Consider the two dollars a bonus for your good work,” she said with a tipsy smile, a phantom of the pretty girl she once must have been making a brief appearance.
Scanlon thanked her again and carefully balanced the plate of leftovers in one hand as he headed out the door. On the drive back up the mountain to his cabin, his eagerness to get to the satellite phone to call Adam Brand made his driving foot heavier than ever. He forced himself to slow the truck to more normal speeds. The mountain roads could be treacherous, even in broad daylight.
He checked the filament he’d left on the door as an early warning. It was in place, completely intact, so he let himself inside and called Isabel’s name.
“Back here,” she called, her voice flat and brisk.
He followed the sound and found her in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, her gaze directed toward the window. Her rigid spine and jutted chin sent a tremor darting through his belly. He knew the signs. She was angry.
A second look at the bed told him why. Sitting next to her, the lid open to reveal the contents, was the plastic box where he kept his notes on his father’s murder.
How the hell had she found it? He’d hidden it deep inside the shallow cubbyhole where he stored his other secrets, well beyond easy discovery.
“Never took you for a snoop, Cooper.” As soon as the defensive words came out of his mouth, he regretted them, even before she turned her furious dark gaze on him.
“The phone slipped out of my grasp,” she said in a tight, furious tone. “I had to feel around in the hole to find it and came across this.” She thumped the box. “I have to wonder why you hid it from me as if it was your porno stash or something.”
“I don’t have a porno stash—”
Her gaze whipped up again, positively lethal. “Seven years, Scanlon. I’ve had your stupid back for seven years, risking my life and my sanity for you, and all you’ve done the whole time is lie to me.”
“It wasn’t all lies,” he protested.
“But it was the big one.” She reached into the storage box, her fingers ruffling the pages inside. “A whole life I didn’t know a damned thing about.”
He wasn’t sure if she was talking about his short life as Bennett Allen Jr. or the secret life he’d lived obsessing over his father’s death.
“Did it ever occur to you that I could have helped you?” Her voice came out almost plaintive. “I’m a good investigator. If you’d just told me
the truth—”
The skin on his neck crawled at the thought. His life as Bennett Allen Jr. was a secret, even in his family. His mother had moved them out of Alabama not merely out of grief but also fear. Fear that he’d remember who fired the shot that night. Fear that whoever had killed his father would decide he was a risk they couldn’t afford to leave alive.
“You’re Ben Scanlon,” his mother had told him soon after she married a very kind man who’d been more than happy to adopt her son and give him a new name. “George is your daddy now.”
The other life, didn’t—couldn’t—exist. Except in his memory, and now in the secret world that came alive only when he opened that plastic storage box.
Isabel’s expression shifted, puzzlement showing in her eyes. “Are you afraid to talk about it?”
He crossed to the bed and sat next to her, looking down at the stack of papers that constituted the only things left of his former life. “My mother believed I’d be killed if we stayed around. I saw who did it. As far as he knew, I could testify against him.”
“So you know who did it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember. I never do. Sometimes I dream about it, but the movie in my brain always skips that scene and goes right into the aftermath. I hear the truck. The gunshot. I see Daddy lying in his own blood—”
Her voice softened. “But nothing else?”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried hypnosis, therapy—I’ve tried everything out there. But I just can’t remember that one moment of time.”
Her soft fingers brushed lightly over his. Just one light touch before she withdrew her hand again. He felt a chasm still stretching out between them, impossible to cross.
How had they gone so quickly from this morning’s intimacy to this afternoon’s distance? By one small lie?
But it wasn’t a small lie. It was huge. He’d lied about who he was, about a vital part of his life he’d hidden from everyone else in the world—including her.
He scrubbed his burning eyes with the heels of his palms. “I’m sorry.”
“That you lied or that I found out about it?”
Her flat tone made him wince. He gave her the honesty she deserved. “That you found out about it.”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she sighed. “How’d the shift at the feed store go?”
He’d almost forgotten all about his encounter with the SSU agents and their gunrunning buddy Kurasawa. Quickly, he outlined what had happened. “I’m not sure it’s the start of an actual gunrunning venture or a test.”
“Maybe it’s both,” Isabel suggested.
“Maybe.” He noticed for the first time that the knapsack he’d retrieved from the drop site that first night was sitting on the floor by the bed. It looked full. “You’re already packed to leave?”
“Didn’t see the point of waiting ’til the last minute.”
He glanced at the bedside alarm clock. It was half past six already. “Have you eaten any dinner?”
“No.”
“Come on. One last bologna sandwich for the road.”
The look she shot him was full of exasperation, but he saw a little softening, too. He’d take it. He didn’t want her to leave him—possibly forever—still hating his guts.
“I lied about the bologna,” he said when they reached the kitchen, showing her the leftovers he’d brought home with him.
“Are you sure Leamon Tolliver didn’t poison it?” she asked doubtfully, as she sat down across from him at the card table.
“Davy McCoy better hope not,” Scanlon said with a grin. “I ran into him on the way to my truck and traded the plate Leamon gave me for the one Davy had. Davy was so drunk he didn’t even notice the switch.”
“You’re so bad,” she murmured, but he saw a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips.
A fresh ache of regret washed through him. Two hours. That was all he had left with her now, and he was wasting most of it trying to fix the damage done by his lifetime of lies.
“I should have told you,” he admitted. “I knew six months into working together that you were the soul of honesty and discretion. You’d have never said or done anything that would put me in danger or set me at odds with our bosses.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Habit, I guess,” he answered slowly, trying to sort through motives he’d never bothered to examine before now. “Maybe a little shame.”
“Shame? For what?”
He spooned half of the leftovers onto the clean paper plate in front of her. “For not remembering who killed my father.”
“You were a little boy and it was a huge trauma.”
“If I’d just remembered, I might not be here now.” He reached across the table and touched the locket hanging around her neck. “Your friend might even be alive, if the same person who killed my father was behind the bomb that killed your friend. You wouldn’t be a target.”
“You don’t know that the shooter and the bomber were the same person.”
“I don’t know that they weren’t.”
“You think it was a Swain.”
“I’m certain it was a Swain. I just don’t know which one.”
She pushed the sauce-slathered barbecue pork around the paper plate without actually eating any of it. “I read through all the articles while you were gone.”
“What did you learn?”
“Very little,” she admitted. “Now that I know you don’t remember what happened, I’m curious why not. Did your dad knock you to the ground to protect you and you hit your head, maybe?”
“No. It happened too fast for that. I think the shots came before either one of us realized what happened.”
“Maybe you jumped out of the way and ended up taking a knock on the head from that.”
“No, I remember one thing very clearly. I was standing on my feet, looking down at my daddy’s body in the driveway.” The image was brutally clear in his mind, even now. “He’d taken two rounds in the chest. Rifle shots.”
“Two .30 Winchester Center Fire cartridges,” she murmured.
He nodded. “Left big holes.”
“I’m sorry. That’s a horrible picture to have in your head as your last memory of your dad.” She closed her hand over the top of his. “Have you considered that the reason you can’t remember the shooting is that you knew the shooter?”
“I’m pretty sure I knew him,” he agreed. “Bolen Bluff’s a tiny place, and I spent the first eight years of my life here, going to church and school, going downtown to eat dinner at the diner—” The diner wasn’t there anymore, at least not the diner of his childhood. The Creavey family had taken it over at some point since he and his mother had left town for Texas. The former owners must have been one of the many families who’d fled town when the Swain family consolidated its hold on the place during the years right after his father’s death. “I knew everybody back then.”
“You don’t look much like you did when you were a kid, but your mom looks almost exactly the same.”
“George Scanlon’s been good for her. He worked a nice, boring desk job for twenty-five years, came home at a decent hour and treated her like a treasure.” He smiled, thinking about his stepfather. “He’s been a good dad to me, too.”
“He adopted you?”
“Yeah. That added another layer of protection to me, too. But he’d have wanted to do it, anyway.”
“Does he know you witnessed your father’s death?”
“Yeah. Mom told him. He’s guarded our secret for decades now.” Scanlon felt a rush of love for the man who’d made his mother smile again after his father’s death. “If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit he’s probably been a better husband than my own dad could have ever been for her. She doesn’t constantly worry that when he walks out of the house in the morning he might never come back.”
The satellite phone sitting on the table next to his untouched plate rang, sending a jolt of adrenaline through his tense body. He
answered. “Yeah?”
“We’re moving up the extraction time.” It was Adam Brand. “Can you get her there at seven-thirty?”
“Yeah—but why the change?”
“Huntsville SAC needs his men back by ten for an operation they’ve had to set up last-minute. Trying to extract her at eight-thirty cuts things too close.”
“Okay, we’ll be there.” He hung up and looked at Isabel, overwhelmed by the sense of time passing at the pace of a lightning strike. He saw an answering dread in her eyes.
“Your extraction time’s moved up. We have to have you there at seven-thirty.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked up at him again, her chin squaring with determination. “Better get a move on.”
He followed her back to the bedroom to retrieve her things, acutely aware that the next half hour might be the last time they would ever get to spend together.
Chapter Sixteen
The ride in the back of Scanlon’s old pickup truck wasn’t as bad as it would have been had Isabel not been wrapped up snug as a bedbug in a thick quilt that hid her from view of anyone who might pass them by on their way down the mountain.
The truck rolled to a stop, the engine dying with a sputter. She felt a tug on the quilt. “Roll,” came Scanlon’s terse order, muffled by the layers of batting.
She started rolling, as they’d practiced, until she was free. Scanlon caught her as she nearly rolled off the open tailgate to the ground below. He kept his arms around her, his voice low in her ear as he asked, “You okay?”
“Fine,” she answered, although her pulse was too rapid for comfort. She was standing in the middle of a small barn, little more than a shed, really, that might have housed a couple of horses, tops, in its heyday. But the time-faded wooden walls provided some cover for anything going on inside, while she suspected its exterior was nothing special enough to draw the attention of eyes well used to the sight of abandoned sheds, cabins and barns dotting the rural countryside like a blight.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He consulted his watch. “Seven-twenty. They should be here any time now.”
