“This is my favorite.” Chase pointed to a photo of her in a tall-grassed pasture, the sun shining though her curtain of straight blond hair as she leaned forward to plant a kiss on the outstretched muzzle of a pinto gelding. Her grandparents had given her the horse for her tenth birthday, a few months after the death of her mother.
“Comanche.” Sam raised her hand to the photo. Her throat tightened, even after all these years, at the sight of the gelding. She’d loved that ornery old red-and-white horse like nothing else, and had felt so guilty when she left for college and had to give him to a neighbor girl.
Despite Chase’s outwardly calm demeanor, tension radiated from him in waves. She could practically feel him vibrating. “Why are you really here, FBI?”
“For you, querida.” He ran a finger down her cheek. “I have something to tell you.”
Zola peeked in through the doorway. “Dinner, you two.”
“Later,” Chase whispered before he turned away. “This is a lovely room, Zola.”
“I can’t believe this.” Sam gestured to the wall. “I’ve never seen some of these.”
“Your father had all those photos squirreled away in his desk drawers for as long as I can remember. I thought it was about time they got framed before he wore them out with all his fingerprints. C’mon. Food’s on the table now.”
Sam fretted all the way to the table about how to introduce Chase. What would her father’s colleagues and her old high school cohorts make of her lover? She finally settled on saying simply, “This is Chase Perez.”
She needn’t have worried about anything more, because as usual Chase took charge of the situation, charming all the ladies present, complimenting their cooking, and answering questions about the FBI.
Several of the husbands present exchanged steely glances. One asked if Perez was a Mexican name. Chase responded with a tale about his grandfather, who had been a logger in the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico before emigrating to work in Idaho. All the women seemed thoroughly enchanted, and in the rare moments they lifted their gazes from Chase, both Stephanie and Cathy shot green-eyed glances Sam’s way. Now this was a novel feeling, to have her old high school chums jealous of her.
There would be gossip at the café later, but if the church ladies accepted him, then Special Agent Starchaser Perez would be welcome. Still, Sam suspected that he might be classified more as an exotic entertainment than a regular man.
After an hour, Chase showed signs of feeling like an entertainer who was waiting for the second act to relieve him. He’d emptied his water glass twice, and kept grabbing for Sam’s hand. Little Madison, sitting across the table from him, asked where his gun was.
“That’s a secret,” he said. “You don’t need me to arrest someone, do you?”
The child giggled. Chase said, “I’ve hogged the conversation long enough. We’re here to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Mark Westin and Zola McAfee. I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting them, but most of you have known them for years, and now I’d like to hear some stories about the two of them.”
Well done, Sam thought. She spoke up. “Let’s go around the table. Stephanie? Why don’t you go first?”
Stephanie blushed, embarrassed to be caught with nothing to say. In Sam’s opinion, it was not an adequate punishment for an opossum basher, but it was the best she could come up with at the moment.
“DAD, Zola. Chase and I are going for a drive.” She stood on the front porch, one hand in Chase’s.
“Now?” Her father cast a look at Zola, sitting beside him on the porch swing. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Summer and I are still on Pacific Time,” Chase countered. “It’s a lovely night. And you two no doubt have lots to talk about in private.”
The air had, thankfully, cooled to a mere eighty-five degrees. The warm night vibrated with the hum of locusts in the trees. At least everyone always called them locusts when Sam had grown up. Most everyone outside of Kansas called the insects cicadas.
“We’ll be back in an hour or two,” Sam said.
“Chase, I already made up your bed on the sofa in Mark’s study,” Zola told him.
His dark eyes glinted as he nodded. “Perfect. Thank you. We’ll see you two in the morning.”
“Church at ten,” her father reminded her.
“Night,” Sam called over her shoulder as she followed Chase to the driveway. Her rental car was a low-priced something-or-other manufactured somewhere in Asia. His was a sleek convertible.
“Is the FBI paying for this car?” She finger-combed her hair loose from her French braid and let her hair fly in the breeze as they rattled down the gravel road.
He grinned. “That’s top secret. Where’s this lake you told me about?”
She directed him for the five and a half miles of open road. Then she had to get out to open the gate across the cattle guard to let him drive into a pasture. They drove slowly through a herd of curious Hereford cows, then crested a small hill and cruised down the rough road to the lake.
The lake looked smaller than she remembered, but no less magical, shimmering among the black oaks and cottonwoods, the half-moon and stars reflected in its placid surface. Chase cut the engine and they sat, staring through the bug-encrusted windshield at the dark water. The locusts seemed even louder out here, their song a deep primal hum in the night.
“Nice,” Chase said. He wiped a drip of sweat from his forehead. “Is it always this hot?”
“In August? Oh, yeah. We’re lucky. It barely broke a hundred today. Chase, you said you have something to tell me?”
“I’m working up to it. Give me a minute.”
Sam rested her head on the back of the seat and stared at the sky. It was rare to see so few clouds and so many stars at her home in western Washington. In the far distance a coyote howled. She threw back her head and let out a loud “Arroooooooo! Yip, yip, aroooooooooooooooo!”
A different coyote answered, this one a little closer than the first.
“Sweetheart, is there something you need to tell me about your Kansas heritage?” Chase’s face was deadpan. “Some trend that runs in your family that comes out on the night of the half-moon?”
“Sorry,” she laughed. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”
“And I’ve been wanting to do this all day.” Hooking a hand behind her head, he pulled her close for a kiss. “For three weeks, actually.”
His lips were hot and insistent against hers, and they clung together for a long, intense moment. Sam felt a little breathless when they parted. “Chase, I am so glad you’re here.” She started to unbutton the front of her sundress. “I’ll race you.”
“No fair getting a head start!” He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, then yanked it off over his head, following it with his T-shirt, tossing them into the backseat. He’d just unbuckled his belt when she stepped out of the car, letting her dress and underwear fall to the ground in one move.
“Summer?”
She dashed across the dry grass and splashed into the lake. The water was only slightly cooler than the air, silky smooth against her skin. She waded out until the water was up to her neck, and then turned onto her back. She was floating quietly, looking at the Milky Way, when she felt his hands come up under her shoulders and buttocks. “I win,” she said.
“You must have been a terror in high school.” He propelled her gently through the water.
“I am the preacher’s daughter; I have a reputation to uphold.”
He kissed her right breast. “Feeling better?”
“Mmmmm. Cooler, anyway. That feels wonderful. But I’m not going to forget; you still haven’t told me your news.”
His lips moved to the other breast. Then his grip on her abruptly tightened, and his head jerked up. “What was that?”
“What?” Had he heard something?
“I felt something move against my ankle.”
She giggled.
“Something just grabbed my toe!” He
dropped her and fell back, thrashing.
She floundered into an upright position and grabbed his forearm. “Relax, Chase.”
“There’s something in the water with us!”
“There are all kinds of things in the water with us.” She pulled him to his feet and put her arms around his waist. “Fish. They’re the toe grabbers.” She kissed the smooth skin between his nipples. “Frogs.”
“Frogs?”
She slid her hands over his muscular buttocks. “Turtles.”
“Turtles?” He tensed in her arms. “Like snapping turtles?”
She smiled at the nervousness in his voice. Sometimes she forgot that he’d grown up in the suburbs. “Snapping turtles are possible, city boy.” She moved her hands to his shoulders. “But not likely.”
“That’s city man to you, swamp sister.”
“There’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. Fish, frogs, turtles—tonight we’re all just creatures of the night, creatures of the lake.” She pulled herself up and wrapped her legs around his waist.
“You preachers’ daughters are merciless.” Staggering a little on the mossy lake bottom, he carried her out onto the grass.
26
AS Chase buttoned his shirt, he caught a glimpse of something in the darkness. “Uh, Summer?”
They were in the front seat of the car, putting on their clothes. She looked over her shoulder. Four white-faced heifers stared at her from behind the convertible, their large dark eyes barely visible in the gloom. Laughing, she turned back. “Don’t worry, they’re curious, not carnivorous.” She pointed to a button that he was pushing through a mismatched buttonhole, and he huffed in exasperation and yanked it out again. “When do you have to go back to Salt Lake, Chase?”
“I leave tomorrow at two P.M.,” he said. “But I’ll be in Seattle on Wednesday.”
“You’re coming back to Seattle?” Yes! That was a lot sooner than she’d expected. “Another task force conference?”
“I need to be at the Western Wildlife Conference on Friday.”
Uh-oh. Was this what he’d come to tell her? He probably thought it would be a pleasant surprise. But she really didn’t want him to watch her give her speech. More than likely, she’d make a fool out of herself. She cupped his face in her hands, looked into his deep brown eyes. “Chase, that’s really sweet, but you don’t need to—”
“Oh, I do.” Picking up her hair elastic, he motioned for her to turn around in the seat. Then he ran his fingers through her damp hair, pulling it back to the crown of her head and starting to braid it. She didn’t want to think about how he’d learned to weave a French braid; hopefully it was from his sister and not a long string of girlfriends.
More of the cattle herd had gathered around the car now. She was starting to feel a little self-conscious; she’d forgotten how silly one could feel with a rapt bovine audience.
Chase’s supple fingers stroking her scalp felt heavenly; it was hard to concentrate on what she wanted to say. “I’m flattered that you want to come, querido, but I’m not sure I want you in the audience. It might make me nervous. I mean, more nervous.”
“I’ll be backstage. But you won’t see me. Because you won’t be there.”
“Of course I will; I’m the keynote speaker.”
He snapped the elastic onto the end of her braid. “Summer, we found a list.”
She turned to face him. “A list?”
“Frazier was the key.”
“That scrap of paper in Lisa Glass’s Bible?”
“You mean Allyson Craig’s Bible.”
She blinked at him for a second. “Are you telling me that Allie Craig and Lisa Glass are—were—the same person?”
He nodded. “Looks like Allyson took the trail crew job to make some money. She didn’t want anyone to know she was working for the government.”
“Oh, no. Who’s going to tell her poor father?”
“He found out at Lisa’s memorial service. He came to us. To your friend Joe, actually. He thought his daughter had been murdered by her boyfriend, Jack Winner. But it looks like her death was an accident.”
“It was the C-4, right? They blew open the mine.” She knew that Lisa—Allyson—hadn’t been telling the whole truth about that night.
He nodded again. “Allyson must have been in the wrong spot at the wrong time. That branch that the rangers picked up? One side had Allyson’s blood on it; the other had explosive residue—it had to have been lying on top of the mine crater at the time, and then was propelled by the explosion.”
“But the fire?”
“It was probably set to cover up evidence of the explosion. Either her cohorts thought Allyson was dead, or wanted to make sure she did die. In either case, they left her there.”
“That’s so…cold.” Poor Lisa; what could she have thought on waking up all alone? “Why didn’t anyone come to see her in the hospital?”
“Get this: they never knew it was Allyson. The newspaper only mentioned a park service employee.”
“And her ID said she was Lisa Glass.”
“And Allyson was a member of the Patriot Order—the P.O.b. note in her Bible referred to a Patriot Order branch, not to a post office box. The Patriot Order is an antigovernment group. None of her friends would think to look for her among park employees.”
The girl’s tattoo, her accusation of a big-nosed Jew. “Is the Patriot Order a white supremacist group, too?”
“Parts of it have that tendency, yes. Looks like the skinheads have joined forces with the old militia movement.”
In the hospital, Lisa—Allyson—seemed so vulnerable. So sweet. It just went to show: you could never know what was going on another person’s mind. She’d felt sorry for this terrorist-in-training? A dark thought suddenly leapt to mind. “Oh jeez, is Allyson’s father part of this Patriot Order, too? I got him a job with the trail crew—”
Chase shook his head. “Ernest Craig had no idea what his daughter was up to.”
“That poor man.” Sam’s head was spinning. The cows, lured by their quiet conversation, had moved closer now. She could hear one chewing its cud near the right rear fender. “You said Frazier was the key?”
“Frieda Frazier was an Internet friend of Allie’s. Head of a group called Justice for Veterans. Its mission is to put pressure on the government to take care of veterans’ health and unemployment problems.”
Ernest Craig’s limp immediately came to mind. “That sounds worthwhile,” Sam said. Maybe Lisa—Allyson—wasn’t quite the terrorist Chase was making her out to be.
“Except that the group’s idea of pressure isn’t merely political. Frazier was also a leader in the Patriot Order, and it looks like she and Allie were hatching a scheme to blow up the VA building in Seattle.”
Sam twisted to study Chase, and the closest cow shied back with a snort. “This is what you’ve been working on? I thought you and Nicole were assigned to those robberies.”
He popped open the glove compartment and yanked out a piece of paper, turned on the light on the bottom of the rearview mirror. “We matched the fingerprints of one of our armed robbers to a security guard at a warehouse in Carbonado, Wyoming. We found this in a recycle bin there.”
Judging by the faint lines that ran vertically down the photocopy, the original had been shredded and then pasted together again. It was a table of letters and numbers, labeled EMINENTEN GRANTS at the top.
“Grants?” she asked. “Is this some sort of scholarship list?”
He chuckled. “I guess you could say that. The money from the robberies is meant for the payouts.”
“Payouts? What for?”
“You’ll see.”
The columns on the page were headed by the letters B, T, and O. The squares under B were filled with numbers; those under T and O contained letters.
B? T? O? Only the letters in the O column looked remotely familiar—IRS, SSA, NOAA, USFWS…“What is this?” she asked. “A list of government organizations?”
> “Check out the row with NPS in the last column.”
She read the row backward. A heifer crowded her side of the car again; the animal’s breath was hot on the back of her neck. It felt as if the cow were reading over her shoulder. “O—NPS. T—SW.” She looked up at him. “O, Organization. What does T stand for?”
“We think it stands for ‘Target.’”
She stared at him, open-mouthed. He answered her unasked question. “And we believe SW stands for Summer Westin.”
27
“BUT I’m not part of the National Park Service. I was just a temp. Again.” The heifer at her elbow blew a puff of warm air as if to emphasize the point.
“Apparently they don’t know that.”
The locusts, receiving some silent, invisible signal, began to hum again from the nearby stand of cottonwoods. “What happened to blowing up the VA building?”
“That was Allyson’s plan. Guess the plan changed after she died.”
It’s not yet time. Her stomach did an odd little flip-flop.
“These are huge organizations. It took a long time to link these initials with dates and come up with names of individuals.” Chase pointed at the letters next to IRS. “RO is Robert Orso. After thirty-five years of service, the IRS office in San Diego is giving him a retirement party on August twenty-eighth.” His index finger moved down a couple of squares. “Natalie Seger is the public affairs officer for the U.S. Marshals service in Atlanta. She’s hosting a medal ceremony on August twenty-eighth. Ralph Guze is a customs inspector. As far as we know, he’ll be at work on Friday, on the docks in Baltimore.”
She stared at him in horror. “The number we found on the tree—eight-one-two-eight? It’s not eight-one, is it? It’s eight-slash, as in forward slash, as in August twenty-eight. Eminent-ten,” she gasped. “How cleverly obscure. An eminent man could also be called an august man, although that usage is pretty archaic; ten is two plus eight. August twenty-eight.”
Bear Bait (9781101611548) Page 27
