The Reaper (The Phoenix Chronicles Book 2)

by R. J. Patterson

  “I don’t even recognize them, I swear. How could I tell anyone without knowing who they were first?”

  Alex gestured with a head nod for Hawk to join her in the kitchen. They both strode over and talked in hushed tones.

  “Either he’s a damn good liar or he’s telling the truth,” Alex said.

  “I agree,” Hawk said. “We need to change our line of questioning.”

  “I’ll let you take the lead.”

  They both returned to the living room and sat down.

  “So,” Hawk began, “Ambassador Brownfield, if we’re to believe you, you need to answer a few questions for us, starting with this: Who might have access to the information about what DEA agents are in the country?”

  “Nobody,” Brownfield said. “That information is strictly confidential.”

  “Are you saying you’re the only who knows who those people are?” Alex asked.

  “I’m saying I don’t even know who they are.”

  Hawk shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Alex furrowed her brow. “Is it possible someone else could have obtained this information without your knowledge?”

  Brownfield shrugged. “I guess so. Our embassy isn’t Fort Knox.”

  “So, if you had to guess who might have access and who might be motivated to find out, who would that be?” Alex asked.

  “Well, I guess there’s a few people I could think of.”

  “We need their names,” Alex said as she placed a pen and a notepad on the coffee table in front of Brownfield. “We’ll wait.”

  He sighed and then picked up the pen and began to write.

  CHAPTER 6

  Washington, D.C.

  MORGAN MAY ENTERED Lincoln’s Waffle Shop and sat down at the counter. She glanced around the eatery for Kate Jolly, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “I know you,” said the man behind the counter, pointing at Morgan. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  Morgan cocked her head to one side and pursed her lips, half embarrassed and half impressed. It had been ten years since she last darkened the doors of Lincoln’s, but it had been with her uncle, who was a frequent customer.

  “Reggie, that’s quite a memory you have,” she said.

  “My memory? What about yours? I can’t remember your name, just your face. But you?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Don’t think too highly of me. Your name’s on your shirt.”

  Reggie pointed at her and chuckled. “Now you’re just playin’ with me.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said with a wink. “I’m a big tipper.”

  “In that case, what can I get going for you, Miss—”

  “Let’s just go with Miss Congeniality.”

  Reggie smiled. “Alright, Miss Congeniality. Lay it on me.”

  Morgan relayed her order to Reggie. He didn’t write it down, but delivered a piping hot plate covered with waffles, over easy eggs, and crispy bacon, served with a steaming cup of coffee. She thanked him for the meal and then glanced around the restaurant again.

  Still no sign of Kate.

  Morgan ate slowly, hoping that she would be able to discuss more general details with Kate once she arrived. But by the time Morgan was done sopping up all the syrup that had dripped off the side of her waffle and onto her plate, Kate was nowhere to be seen.

  When Morgan finished, she pulled out the piece of paper Kate had given her and checked it against the address printed on the menu. The addresses matched. Morgan was in the right place. She looked at her watch. It was 7:58 a.m., and the meeting time was clearly 7:30 a.m.

  Where is she?

  Morgan waited another ten minutes before calling Kate. Maybe she’d developed a case of cold feet or decided turning over the information wasn’t worth even the big check that was tucked away in Morgan’s purse. Whatever the reason, something seemed off to Morgan.

  Mia’s workup on Kate delivered news of a checkered past. She had worked for several generals at the Pentagon, including at least one affair. The latter wasn’t public, but it was noted in a file the FBI kept on her. It was also the reason why General Lastinger’s never advanced any higher up the ranks, even though he was never notified of the reason. He was labeled a security threat because of the infidelity with Kate, derailing a promising career. But if there was anything Morgan learned about her informant, it’s that she was a go-getter, an opportunist to the nth degree. When she saw a chance, she took it, undaunted by the potential consequences if she happened to fail. The way Kate got her first assignment working at the Pentagon was when she was driving the beverage cart at a golf course frequented by military generals. She told one of the generals that she would buy all his drinks for an entire round if he’d get her an interview at the Pentagon. He told her that he admired her moxie and set it up. Two weeks later, she was working as an administrative assistant.

  But on this morning, the tenacious woman who had engineered a situation where she could earn a substantial check—one that already had her name on it—was missing.

  Morgan thanked Reggie and promised to return the next time she was in Washington, leaving her connection to the restaurant a mystery. She’d wanted to talk further about it with him, but there were other things on her mind.

  When she returned to her car, she pulled out the document Mia had prepared and looked up Kate’s current address. She drove to the apartment just ten minutes away and knocked on Kate’s door. No one responded.

  “Kate, are you in there? It’s Morgan.”

  Still no reply.

  Morgan considered breaking in, but didn’t want to be tied to an investigation in case foul play was involved. She decided to call Metro PD and request a welfare check.

  After making the call, Morgan remained in the lobby until the police arrived. A pair of officers went upstairs to Kate’s apartment. She waited a couple of minutes before following them.

  Morgan peered around the corner as the two officers used the master key the building superintendent had given them. A few moments later, she heard one of the officers curse and call the other one over. Morgan hustled down the hall toward the open door. She poked her head inside.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  One of the men shook his head. “Did you know Miss Jolly?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yeah, I was familiar with her. Is something wrong?”

  “Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to step back,” the other officer said. “This is now a crime scene.”

  “A crime scene? What happened?”

  “Not sure at this point,” the other officer said. “But someone from Miss Jolly’s work called in a welfare check and we responded. We found her dead in her tub.”

  “Is foul play suspected?” Morgan asked.

  “Man, you’re a nosy neighbor,” the other officer said. “We literally just found out a minute ago. We don’t know. Now, please run along. We don’t want to attract a lot of attention with this.”

  Morgan glanced around the living room. Sofa cushions were scattered haphazardly on the floor. Every drawer in the china cabinet was left open. Sneaking a peek into the adjacent kitchen, Morgan found more of the same. There was no denying someone had come looking for something. But Morgan had no idea if they’d found anything.

  “Of course,” Morgan said. “Mum’s the word.”

  She hustled downstairs and made a beeline for the security office. She knocked on the door and asked the portly man seated behind a computer if he could let her look at the tapes from the night before.

  The man ran his tongue over his teeth. “Not that I can let you do that without a warrant, but I was just archiving those an hour ago and it’s the strangest thing. The entire feed seemed to cut out last night for about two hours. Never had that happen before.”

  “That’s odd,” Morgan said. “What could cause something like that?”

  “It’d have to be deliberate. And only somebody with a high level of expertise woul
d be able to remotely scrub two hours of footage. But they did it, by George.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Morgan said.

  She didn’t need to see the tape anymore. She knew The Alliance was responsible for Kate’s death. But now Morgan had no idea what incriminating evidence Kate had collected—and she might never know.

  As Morgan returned to her car, she called Mia and updated her.

  “So what do you want to do now?” Mia asked.

  “Find out whatever you can,” Morgan said. “I’m not letting The Alliance get away with this.”

  Morgan put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the check with Kate’s legal named typed on it.

  “Kathryn T. Jolly,” Morgan said aloud as she shook her head. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. What a shame.”

  She shoved the check into her pocket and headed back to the hotel. She still had work to do in Washington.

  CHAPTER 7

  Gordon, Nebraska

  REAPER STUDIED HIS NEW sunglasses, looking intently at them in his rearview mirror. Beneath it, a Christmas tree air freshener dangled, seeming to almost keep a rhythm with the twangy country music pumping through his truck’s speakers. But this wasn’t new country; it was the oldies, the greats, the Merle Haggards, the Conway Twittys, the Kenny Rogers. And Reaper hated it.

  He’d traded vehicles, in a manner of speaking. The semitruck he’d driven through the Dakotas found a new home at the bottom of a reservoir in Iowa, Chester Guidry’s body included. It’d be weeks, maybe even months, before anyone found it. And by then Reaper would be into the wind, as if he wasn’t already.

  For his final target, Reaper wanted to do it in style. He wanted to blend in with the locals by looking the part, so much so that he stopped along the road and picked a wheat stalk to hang out of his mouth. But after five minutes of driving around the sleepy Nebraska town, he realized he stood out more than he blended in.

  If only I’d bought the truck with the steer horns on the front.

  Aces Ranch was located just south of town, which was the last known location for Travis Taylor, Reaper’s target. According to the latest intel reports, Taylor had sought a job at Aces Ranch herding cattle across the open range. As Reaper perused the report, he noticed some striking similarities between himself and Taylor. Both patriots. Both nomads. Both craving direction after leaving the military. But their stories diverged when it came to why they were the way they were.

  Reaper wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was bloodthirsty. He found an inordinate amount of pleasure in snuffing out another man’s life. But not Taylor. He was a wandering soul for another reason, one entirely tragic, according to the dossier Reaper had read.

  Just weeks before Taylor returned home from his final tour in Afghanistan, his wife Tracy, who’d given birth to a boy just a few months before, died in a fiery automobile accident. Both Tracy and little Zach were killed almost instantly, according to the coroner’s report. That was little solace for Taylor, whose arrival back in the U.S. was met with tears of sorrow and grief. His parents, who lived in Dallas, took Taylor in to let him grieve. Military psych evaluations showed that Taylor didn’t handle the situation all that well as he suffered from PTSD and struggled to cope with the loss of his wife and son. So, he sought to escape from it all by choosing a nomadic lifestyle on the range.

  Reaper stared out at the vast open range and stroked his goatee. He saw the appeal in working outside with animals and only nature to boss him around.

  If I didn’t like killing so much . . .

  Reaper watched a couple of cowboys wrangle a stray calf. They tied a rope around its neck and let the horse do the dirty work of breaking the young cow’s spirit. Within ten minutes the calf was compliant, trotting to keep pace with the horse.

  Reaper put the truck in drive and headed toward the ranch offices to see if he could get a location on Taylor. While Reaper figured the folks at Aces Ranch would be suspect of a stranger poking around, he concocted a story that would likely generate more enthusiasm to help him: Taylor was the beneficiary of a large inheritance and needed to be found as soon as possible. Reaper thought the story was foolproof. All he needed was one person in the office willing to direct Reaper toward his final target.

  He parked outside the white cinder block office building and was about to get out when his personal cell phone rang. Reaper sighed as he glanced at the name on the caller ID: The Ex.

  She had a name, though it sent a surge of emotions through Reaper every time he heard it. Kayla transformed from a sweet wife to a vindictive ex the moment he was served divorce papers. He couldn’t deny that there was part of him that still loved her—or at least, who she used to be. But he also hated the new Kayla, the petty spiteful woman who liked to bury him with guilt whenever they talked, especially when it came to Charlie.

  Reaper’s phone continued to buzz. If he didn’t answer, Kayla would keep calling until she got a response.

  Better get this over with.

  “Yeah,” Reaper answered as a received the call.

  “Where are you?” Kayla asked.

  “How many times do I have to—”

  “Never mind. I don’t want to waste my precious time fighting with you today. I just wanted to remind you that it’s Charlie’s birthday in a couple of days.”

  “I know. I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Well, that’s something new because you’ve forgotten the last two years.”

  Reaper sighed. “Kayla, I told you both times I had to go dark on a mission.”

  “Yes, that was a real comforting message I could pass along to Charlie while he’s sobbing over the fact that his dad forgot his birthday.”

  “I hope you told him the truth.”

  “Do you think he cares about why you didn’t call him? He only cares that you didn’t.”

  “I’ll call him,” Reaper said.

  “Will you? I just want to know if I should prepare him for his annual day of disappointment.”

  “If I said I’d call him, I will.”

  “That’s almost a guarantee that it won’t happen.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to fight,” Reaper said.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Just don’t forget, okay?”

  She ended the call before Reaper could say another word. Not that there was anything else to say. Charlie’s birthday was just another excuse for her to highlight all his past failures, something she seemed to revel in doing. Reaper’s excuses were legitimate, but Kayla would never see it that way. And she sure wasn’t about to let Charlie see it that way either.

  Reaper climbed out of the truck and lumbered toward the door to the Aces Ranch office building.

  A woman barely visible behind several stacks of file folders smiled as he walked in.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  Reaper surveyed the rest of the office before he responded. Two men in the back worked their fingers rapidly on a desktop calculator from cubicles in the back, the constant clicking interrupted only by the whine of the machine’s matrix printer. Another woman turned her computer screen in an attempt to hide the fact that she was playing solitaire. A man with a Stetson hat and a handlebar mustache was talking softly on the phone. And the walls were lined with USDA posters promoting beef with images of sizzling steaks to diagrams explaining all the cuts of meat.

  Reaper looked at the woman. “I was wondering if you might be able to help me find Travis Taylor.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “And what is the nature of your inquiry, Mr.—”

  “Kilgore. Ronald Kilgore, esquire. From Montford and Associates in Omaha. Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials.”

  The woman nodded. “So I’m assuming this is to discuss a legal matter with Mr. Taylor?”

  “Recently, a relative of Mr. Taylor’s passed away and has left him a significant inheritance. But I need to speak with him and have been unable to do so in order to finish executing the will.”

  Handlebar mustache ma
n slammed his phone down and strode up to the front desk. “I’m sorry you drove all this way, Mister Bigshot Lawyer. Because if you would’ve picked up the phone and called us, we could’ve saved you a lot of trouble and told you that Mr. Taylor has moved on.”

  “Moved on? How long ago was this?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a while back. Maybe six or seven months.”

  “Do you know where he was going?”

  The man shook his head. “Mr. Taylor was a private man and didn’t have many friends out on the range. So if he had future plans, he didn’t share them with anyone.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address?” Reaper asked.

  Handlebar mustache man laughed. “I guess living in Nebraska doesn’t mean you understand the life of a cowboy, does it?”

  Reaper furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry. What does that mean?”

  “City slickers,” he muttered just loud enough for Reaper to hear. “Just know that cowboys are modern-day nomads. Most of them have no idea where they’re going to lay their heads down from night to night when they’re driving cattle, much less have a forwarding address. To be honest, I doubt Mr. Taylor wants to be found.”

  Reaper nodded and then slid a business card across the counter to the woman. “Well, if you do hear from him, please pass along my contact information. I’d hate for him to miss out on this small fortune.”

  “Have a nice day, Mister,” the handlebar mustache man said.

  “Take care,” the woman said, adding a friendly wave.

  Reaper turned and exited the building, putting his shoulder into the stubborn door to get it to open. He walked back to his truck before pausing and looking at the hive of activity going on at a nearby barn. Instead of leaving, he decided to see if any of the ranch hands would be more helpful.

  The first man Reaper encountered was a guy lugging a bale of hay toward a feeding trough.

  “Excuse me,” Reaper said.

  “I’m a little busy,” the guy snapped.

  Reaper dug a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it up between his middle and index fingers. “Penny for your thoughts.”