False Signs (John Taylor Book 2)

by Travis Starnes

  “You should be more worried about that than me, Mr. Taylor. I didn’t leave some podunk small town deputy dead in someone’s front yard.”

  Taylor stood up, menace in his eyes.

  “Tony,” Whitaker said to Dorset.

  “What? You don’t think the news is going to pick up on that? A guy who got booted from the military on a psych discharge leads a botched raid that leaves a law enforcement officer dead. That’s some good stuff. It’ll be even better if the reporters can get their hands on your file and find out how screwed up you are.”

  “You need to pull your head out of your ass,” Taylor said, trying to ignore the man’s taunting. “You’re going to get a lot of people killed.”

  “I’m not the one getting people killed. Thank god it was just some Barney Fife wannabe and not Agent Whitaker who got hurt by your carelessness. There’d be hell to pay if one of my agents had been hurt.”

  Taylor started moving forward. He hadn’t reasoned it though yet, since attacking a supervising FBI agent would make things harder, not easier, but at that moment, he didn’t care. Only the strong grip of Whitaker on his shoulder stopped him cold.

  “Tony,” she said to Dorset again.

  “We’re done, Mr. Taylor. Go ahead and call your friends, but I’m going to tell you now, you’re going to find your calls going unanswered. This kind of public disaster has a way of making favors disappear. You can leave.”

  Taylor stood there, still wrestling with himself to keep from going across the corner of the table at Dorset.

  “Taylor,” Whitaker said in warning.

  Finally, he turned and looked her in the eyes. Then walked around the table, away from Dorset, and out of the room, shutting the door behind him. He didn’t leave the floor however, but found a place on the wall to lean and wait for Whitaker.

  At first, he couldn’t hear anything through the thick door, but slowly he started to hear voices, mostly one voice. He couldn’t make out specifics, but it became clear pretty quickly that Dorset was ripping into Whitaker. Eventually the raised voice became a yell. This went on for almost fifteen minutes when the yelling finally stopped and the door opened.

  Dorset's face was still a little pink from whatever rage he’d built up in there, and Whitaker had her serious face back on.

  “Use this time wisely, Loretta. Figure out what you want. A career can survive one suspension, but more than that...”

  He left the remainder unsaid. Whitaker looked at Taylor as she passed and he fell into step with her, walking away from Dorset.

  “Lola,” Dorset called after her in a warning tone as they walked away from him, but Whitaker didn’t even flinch.

  “Suspended, huh?” Taylor said as they got in the elevator.

  She just nodded, her face betraying no emotion.

  “For what it's worth, I didn’t mean for this to happen and I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  The elevator reached the lobby.

  “It’s been a pleasure working with you,” Taylor said, and turned to walk out the front entrance.

  “Where are you going?” She said, stopping him.

  “I guess to find a car rental place.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can get back to Lubbock.”

  “I’m not stopping,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going back, too. I’m not giving up on finding these guys.”

  “But, your suspension ...” Taylor said, confused.

  “It just means we’re on our own. But we’re right, and Tony’s wrong. There are some very dangerous people out there who could blow something up at any moment. I owe it to Wade to see this through. I owe it to Julie and Samar. And I owe it to myself. I’m not done yet.”

  Taylor just smiled at her. He didn’t realize how much he actually wanted to keep working with her until that moment.

  “So, I guess we can take your car, then?” he said with a smile.

  “It’s late. Let's call it a night and head back first thing in the morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Any motel you can find and drop me at would work, if you don’t mind giving me a ride.”

  Whitaker looked away for a second, and then back at Taylor, meeting his eyes, “I was thinking maybe you should just stay at my place.”

  “Considering everything that’s happened, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No,” she said, and started walking to the employee garage, giving Taylor little choice but to follow her.

  They didn’t speak on the car ride to her house. Unlike the silence from the first day and a half of their previously forced partnership, the silence wasn’t tinged with anger. Rather, Whitaker was dealing with the possibility of her career, and her dreams with it, going down in flames. All because she did what she thought was right.

  He considered how tough it was to face the reality of something you idolized, as she had the FBI. Seeing it in all its organizational bureaucratic short-sighted glory must be shocking for someone like her. So Taylor let her wallow in her own thoughts for a while. If it continued in the morning, he’d have to try to get her to focus on the job at hand. But sometimes, a person needs a little time for themselves.

  Her apartment was in a high-rise on the outskirts of Dallas, and was exactly what Taylor would have expected on the inside, had he stopped and tried to picture it. Everything seemed to have its own place, and nothing was left lying about. The kitchen was spotless, without even a dish in the drying rack. Whitaker’s exacting nature was on full display in her home.

  Walking into the living room, she took his duffle bag and dropped it on the floor. Grabbing his hand, she pulled Taylor behind her towards the bedroom. After they kicked off their shoes, Whitaker pushed Taylor back on the bed and waved him to one side. Climbing on after him she lay on one arm, cradling her head in the crook of his arm, and pulled the other arm over her shoulder.

  She didn’t ask anything, and he didn’t say anything; just held her loosely. Feeling small shudders in her shoulders, Taylor realize she was crying, and pulled her tighter onto his body, squeezing her hand. She lay on him, weeping silently, until she eventually drifted off to sleep.

  Sliding his arm out from underneath her, he sat up, leaning against her headboard, and started working over what their next step was. With Mullins and the gunmen who hit them at his place all dead, the only obvious thread was whoever tipped them off. He agreed with Whitaker that it had to be either the guy who owned the AC Company or his employee.

  If he had to put money on it, Taylor would have bet on the guy who owned the company. The employee had been a bit too cooperative for him to have turned around and set them up in an ambush. The positive ID the guy gave of Mullins, to the point of describing the tattoo and tying him to one of the vans, didn’t make sense if he was involved. At least, not with Mullins still alive after he’d been thrown under the bus. Sure, Mullins was dead now, and couldn’t tell anyone what he knew; but whoever tipped them off couldn’t have known that was going to happen. For the tipster to be the same person that tagged Mullins as being one of the abductors would have been a massively risky move.

  No, their best bet was to look at Brooks. Of course that led to problem number two. How to find out what he was up to. Was he leading this whole thing, or just tasked with grabbing up Julie to get them an inside man? And how were they going to find out? They didn’t have FBI resources anymore, and the Sheriff had already pushed him pretty hard and gotten nowhere.

  “You are pretty intense when you’re working a problem,” Whitaker said in a quiet voice beside him.

  Taylor looked down at her. She had twisted around and was now cuddled up next to him, her head resting near his. He had been lost in his own thoughts and hadn’t heard her wake up.

  “How so,” he said, pushing everything else to the back of his mind.

  “Your face just gets this intense look. I could actually see you working it, just behind your eyes. What were you thinking about?” s
he asked.

  Taylor thought he heard a hint of nervousness behind the question.

  “Just trying to figure out what we do next, now that Mullins is dead.”

  “Ohh,” she said, pausing briefly, “I assumed we’d be tracking down where the tip-off to Mullins came from.”

  “Yeah. I was also working on where that tip came from. I’m pretty sure it was Brooks, the store owner.”

  “Not the other guy who was there?”

  Taylor explained his reasoning for how he ended at Brooks.

  “Makes sense,” She said after he laid out his case.

  “I thought so.”

  Whitaker lapsed into silence, shifting her body more against Taylor’s legs and stretching an arm across his middle, her face partially buried in his side.

  After a while Taylor thought she might have fallen back asleep, her breathing having become more even, when suddenly she said, “I didn’t sleep with Tony.”

  “What?” He said at the non-sequitur.

  “Agent Dorset. We never slept together.”

  “Ok,” he said, not sure what she was looking for.

  “I just didn’t want you to think ... that before ... that it was about Tony.”

  “I didn’t. I thought it was because you were upset for your career.”

  “It was. I just didn’t want you to think I got all weepy over some guy.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Good,” she said, letting go of him and scooting over in the bed, putting space between them as she rolled to lie on her back. “You must think I’m ridiculous, all needy...”

  Taylor slid down in the bed to put himself almost level with her and leaned over, propped up on his elbow looking down at her. Putting his hand on the side of her cheek he slightly turned her face toward him.

  “Whitaker, I’ve seen men, the biggest baddest soldiers you’ll ever see holding each other crying after a particularly fucked up patrol. It’s been a tough couple of days. I still think you’re the tough, hard-ass take no bullshit woman I met two days ago. Maybe a bit less of a pain in the ass than then, but ...”

  Whitaker gave a chuckle and reached up, wiping away the tear that had started to form. Taylor leaned down, and kissed her, gently. As she kissed him back, the passion quickly ratcheted up for both of them. In short order, their clothes ended in a pile next to her bed. For a time, the concerns about what would happen with her career or what they’d do next all went away.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, neither talked about the night before. By the time she’d showered and dressed in another of her ubiquitous dark pantsuits ... which, it turned out, she had an entire closet full of ... Whitaker was back to her normal self.

  It didn’t take them long to figure out their plan once they got going, since it was pretty straight forward. They would stake out Brooks, and see where he went. If he had been hired to grab Julie, then this would be all for nothing, but it was the only connection they had and both believed the theory of Julie being grabbed to force Samar to let them in was still right. Taylor offered the suggestion that they could grab Brooks, and apply a little pressure to get him to tell them what he knew, but Whitaker nixed that idea. She might be operating outside of the FBI and without a net, but she was still an Agent, and she felt that was a step too far for her.

  To the surprise of both of them, the rest of their drive was taken up with telling each other about themselves. Whitaker told him about her ex-husband. How they met in college and got married a few years later. She told him about how the relationship had changed over time, and he’d become more controlling until she’d demanded a divorce. While it hadn’t been amicable, he’d let her go without a fight, realizing too late he wanted someone less strong-willed than she was.

  Taylor told her about his fiance, how they’d met and how he’d pursued a criminal justice degree between deployments while she was in college, just to be with her. He told her about how, after everyone thought Taylor had died in Afghanistan during the time he was in captivity, she’d met someone else, married and had a child. Taylor realized while telling her the story that it had been months since he thought about her. While the memory of it and the loss of her still stung, he found his anger over it had dissipated somewhat. He never blamed her for the situation and now he could honestly say he hoped she had a good life.

  By mid-afternoon they were back in Lubbock, although in Whitaker’s blue sedan this time instead of the iconic black SUV. For Taylor it felt weird to be back, mostly because everything seemed exactly the same. With everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, the fact that the rest of the world had gone on unchanged felt somehow wrong to him.

  Their first stop was the police station, where the Sheriff was surprised to see them.

  “I’d heard you two were recalled back to Dallas,” the Sheriff said when they were brought back to see him.

  “We were for just last night. We came back to continue investigating the explosives we believe are missing from the armory and find out why we were set up,” Taylor told him, trying to obfuscate while not exactly lying.

  “So the call I received that you two were off the case was what?” The Sheriff asked.

  “Our investigation has become somewhat informal,” Whitaker answered.

  “Uh-huh.” The Sheriff said, leaning back in his chair. “Look, I don’t have a problem with you two doing your thing out there. I want to make the people behind Wade’s murder pay, too. And I don’t like the idea of nut jobs with explosives any more than you do either. But, you two are here as private citizens. I want you to remember that. If you step over the line, I will come down on you. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” Taylor said.

  “Good. Look, if you run into something that's worth investigating, something specific mind you, then call me. I’ll get into it and back your play. Just don’t go making me look like a jackass,” he said, standing up.

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” Whitaker said, reaching across and shaking his hand.

  Leaving the Sheriff’s office, they headed toward the AC Repair shop, finding a spot in a parking lot across the street and three buildings down, that offered a good view of the shop's front door and parking lot.

  “Now what,” Taylor said.

  “Now ... we wait.”

  When she first said it, Taylor hadn’t been prepared for what the full scope of waiting meant. After the first hour, they’d started running out of things to talk about. After the third hour, Taylor was ready to kick in the door of the shop, and drag Brooks out, screaming.

  “This is the real work in police work. Shootouts with bad guys and asking questions is the easy part.”

  “Easy?”

  “Ok, not easy, but at least it’s straight forward. The real work comes when you have to sift through five hundred pieces of paper to find the one sentence you need to close the case. Or when you spend a week sitting on a subject waiting for them to do something.”

  “I swear, I could never be a cop. I am bored out of my mind.”

  “I thought the military was all hurry up and wait.”

  “It is, but most of the time you have a good idea of what happens next or at least when your next move is. And when you're waiting for orders, you can go find something else to do until your team Sergeant comes and tells you to get off your ass and get going.”

  “So you’d be fine if you got to play a little grab-ass.”

  “I mean, if you’re offering, Princess,” Taylor said, a twinkle in his eye.

  She gave him one of her evil stares, but this time Taylor was unfazed. He was starting to see past her no-nonsense facade.

  “Well, let me know if you change your mind,” he said, and leaned the seat back, closing his eyes.

  “Asshole,” she muttered under her breath, eliciting a smile from Taylor.

  *****

  When he woke up, the sun had gone down. Looking over, he could see Whitaker sitting motionless, her gaze never leaving the front of the s
tore.

  “So nothing,” he asked.

  “No, but the store lights just went out,” she said, never looking his way.

  Taylor pulled the seat up and they both sat silently. Not long after Taylor woke up, the front door opened and Brooks walked out, followed by two employees. Brooks spoke to them for a second as he locked the front door, and all three parted ways in the parking lot.

  Brooks pulled out of the parking lot and Whitaker pulled after him, staying well behind. Taylor hadn’t really seen this aspect of investigating before and was focused on the various moves she made to keep Brooks in view while keeping from getting noticed. He honestly found it fascinating.

  Eventually, they ended up at the end of a suburban street, watching Brooks from five houses down as he pulled into the driveway of a small one story home. The lights were all off and only came on once Brooks went inside. Taylor couldn’t remember seeing a wedding ring and it seemed a fair bet he was single.

  “So if he’s in for the night, what do we do,” Taylor asked.

  “Sit here and watch. We don't have teams to relieve us. We have to stay on him constantly until we figure out how he’s tied into this.”

  “This sucks.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  As he had earlier, she leaned her seat back and closed her eyes. They spent the night like this, switching over and watching a house with all the lights out.

  As day broke, Taylor was again in the passenger seat asleep after switching over with Whitaker around five in the morning. He was awakened suddenly as she slapped his arm.

  “Brooks just came out.”

  “A lot earlier than he headed to work the other day,” Taylor said, looking at his watch.

  It was barely seven. When they’d met him at his shop previously, he had arrived to open his store at almost ten in the morning.

  “Yeah,” Whitaker replied absently as she switched the car on and pulled out, following him out of the subdivision.

  They were both surprised when he turned away from downtown Lubbock and headed north on I-27.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Taylor asked after forty-five minutes of driving north.