Wyoming Bold wm-3

by Diana Palmer

  “Now ears are a pretty good identifier,” Tank replied. “You don’t usually try to disguise those, even if you use makeup or wigs.”

  “That’s true.” Hayes agreed. “Maybe we should issue a BOLO for a pair of ears.”

  “It’s not so far-fetched,” Tank assured him. “I’d really like to have a look at that sketch.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I asked you to come down here. Just a sec.” Hayes picked up the phone and called Cash Grier. After a brief conversation, he hung up. “He’s got a few free minutes. Let’s go over to his office and have a look at that sketch.”

  Tank smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

  * * *

  CASH’S SECRETARY, CARLIE Blair, had wavy dark hair and green eyes and a pert smile. She greeted Tank as if he’d been her neighbor all her life. She pulled the sketch out of a nearby filing cabinet and handed it to him.

  “That’s the best the artist could do,” she explained. “It’s not perfect. I think the nose was a little longer and thinner, and the chin had more of a square look.”

  “How about the ears?” Tank asked.

  She blinked. “The ears?” She looked at the sketch and slowly nodded. “Yes, he certainly got those right. I remember because he had sort of a notch in one, as if he’d been cut and it had healed but left a scar.”

  Tank’s jaw was clenched. “Yes,” he said. “I remember now. It was his left ear. And he wore an earring in it, a small gold circlet.”

  “Yes!” she agreed.

  “I remember the earring myself,” Hayes said. He frowned. “Odd, I’d forgotten that.” He scratched his head. “It was overshadowed by the shirt he was wearing. It was paisley, I think.”

  “I remember the shirt, too.” Tank laughed. “It must be a favorite piece of clothing, if he was still wearing it when you saw him.”

  Carlie was frowning. “It was gold paisley,” she recalled, closing her eyes so that she could focus better. “With beige and brown patterns.”

  “Yes,” Tank agreed. The memory came back along with the pain. He was looking at the shirt when the bullets hit.

  “Well, I’ve got a favorite shirt,” Carlie remarked. “I wear it at least twice a week. Of course, it’s not paisley. It’s a black T-shirt with a green alien face and it says, They’re Coming! under it.” She grinned.

  “She likes to wear it if we get visits from feds,” Cash Grier remarked as he joined them, glowering at his secretary. “She’s unconventional.”

  “But I can type, I have a pleasant phone personality and I can find anything you lose, Chief.” She grinned even more broadly.

  He shook his head. “Yes, and you can spell. It’s just that mouth...”

  “What do you mean?” Tank asked.

  Carlie looked past him and her face took on a sarcastic expression. “Well, look what walked in the door. I need to start a fire out back. Got any spare hand grenades on you?” she added.

  The newcomer was Carson, Tank’s shadow on the plane.

  He gave Carlie a glowering stare. “Something wrong with matches?” he asked. “Or don’t you know how to use them?” he added with a bland smile.

  “I can use a Glock,” she retorted. “Wanna see?”

  “She cannot use a Glock,” Cash Grier interjected. “The last time she tried, on the firing range, she hit two windshields and a tire, and the cars weren’t even parked on the range.”

  “It was a horrible accident,” Carlie defended herself.

  “Yes, it was. You picked up a gun.”

  “Your coffee will have salt tomorrow morning in place of sugar,” Carlie assured Cash.

  “If I fire you, your father will make me the subject of his next two sermons,” Cash said grimly. “But I’ll risk it.”

  “Sermons?” Carson asked, frowning.

  “Her father is a Methodist minister,” Cash explained.

  Carson’s expression was indescribable. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Carlie, who avoided him and went back to the drawing on her desk.

  “Don’t worry, religion isn’t contagious,” she told Carson without quite looking at him.

  “Thank goodness,” Carson drawled. He looked at Tank. “Did you recognize the face in the drawing?”

  “Not so much,” Tank replied. “But we’ve all agreed that the ears are the one thing we all remember about him.” He turned to Hayes. “You should talk to those two feds, Jon Blackhawk and Garon Grier...” He frowned and looked at Cash. “Grier?”

  “My brother,” Cash said. “He’s always been FBI. I worked with, shall we say, less structured government agencies.”

  “Covert,” Carson said with a mock cough.

  “Look who’s talking about covert,” Cash said pointedly.

  “Takes one to know one,” Carson shot right back. But he grinned. So did Cash.

  “I’ve already talked to Blackhawk and Cash’s brother,” Hayes told Tank. “Which reminds me, they wanted me to tell you that they can’t set up that hypnotist they wanted you to see. He had a family emergency and is out of town. Maybe another time.”

  “Another time,” Tank agreed, secretly relieved.

  “It turns out that he—” Cash indicated Carson “—worked with an associate of mine from Brooklyn, New York.”

  “Should we ask what sort of work?” Hayes mused.

  “It would be safer not to,” Cash told him.

  Tank shook his head. “I’ve never been in a place where so many people were ex-feds.”

  “Or ex-mercs,” Cash added. “We’ve cornered the market on them.”

  “It’s a good place to retire, or that’s what Cy Parks always says.” Hayes chuckled.

  “He’s a nice fellow,” Tank remarked. “I was perfectly happy to stay in a hotel, but he insisted.”

  “He knows you’re in the market for a new bull,” Cash said with a big grin.

  “Well, I am, actually,” Tank had to agree.

  He went back to Carlie’s desk and took another look at the man. “He really is a chameleon,” he remarked. “But why is he so worried about what we might remember? I couldn’t pick him out on the street. Well, maybe that scarred ear would give him away, but there’s nothing else really memorable about him.”

  “Maybe it’s something that doesn’t readily show,” Carson remarked, joining him. “Or maybe he’s just paranoid.”

  Hayes shook his head. “He killed a computer tech who tried to restore his image on my computer.”

  Carson’s black eyes narrowed. “Yes. He was a friend of mine,” he said tautly. “Sweet kid. Never hurt a fly. Knew everything about computers.” His face set in hard lines. “I’d like to meet the man who popped a cap on him.”

  “He feeds people to crocodiles,” Cash said in a mock whisper, jerking his head toward Carson.

  Carson glared at him. “It was hungry. Poor old thing hadn’t been fed in days.”

  “So it was an act of charity. I see,” Hayes mused.

  Carson shrugged. His expression went even tauter. “The man tortured Rourke’s friend, a female photojournalist covering the assault on Barrera. She’ll carry the scars for the rest of her life.”

  “I don’t doubt that Rourke helped you feed the croc,” Cash replied.

  Carson’s black eyes met his. “Sometimes you do what feels right, even if it’s not quite legal.”

  “Well, it wasn’t in my jurisdiction, so I’m not concerned,” Cash told him. He wagged a finger at him. “But you feed anybody to a crocodile in my town, you’re looking at life behind bars.”

  “No problem,” Carson said. “I like whiskey.”

  “Life...behind...bars. Whiskey.” Tank burst out laughing. It was a play on words that almost got by him.

  Carson actually grinned.

  “And it would be nice if you stopped wearing that damned knife in public,” Cash told the younger man, indicating the huge Bowie knife strapped to his hip. “It makes people nervous.”

  “Makes her nervous, you mean,” Carson replied, jerk
ing his head toward Carlie.

  “I don’t like knives,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Men with guns walk around in here all the time, you don’t mind them,” Carson retorted.

  “I’ve never seen a gunshot wound. I have seen the result of a knife fight.” She gave him a long look. “I had nightmares...”

  He frowned. “When was this?”

  She averted her eyes. “My father was attacked a few months ago by a man with a knife. We don’t know why. He was lucky, because it went in just at the waist and didn’t even nick a vital organ.”

  “Who would attack a minister?” Hayes asked, shocked.

  “We don’t know,” Carlie replied sadly. “Just some crazy guy, we think. Sometimes, I think the whole world’s gone mad.”

  “It does seem so, from time to time,” Tank had to agree. “Did they catch the man?”

  “Not yet,” Cash answered for her. “But we’re still looking.”

  “I don’t like knives,” Carlie reiterated, glaring up at Carson. “Especially that sort.” She indicated the Bowie. “It’s scary.”

  “I’ll start wearing a suit so I can conceal it from you,” Carson promised dryly.

  “Why would you carry something that big?” Hayes wondered.

  “Snakes,” Carson said, deadpan.

  “Good luck going after a sidewinder with a knife,” Tank told him. “You’d get bitten before you could reach him with it.”

  “Not if it was thrown,” Carson returned. He looked so confident that the others just shrugged and let the subject go.

  “Do you remember anything else about the man?” Tank asked Carlie as he studied the sketch. “Anything you didn’t tell the police artist?”

  She was thinking, hard. “I’m not sure. That’s basically what he looked like,” she added, nodding at the portrait. “He was very friendly. Personable. I remember he talked to me about sharks.”

  “Sharks?” Tank probed.

  “He said that they were misunderstood, that people just assumed they were dangerous. But that they really weren’t. It was just when they were hungry, they killed.”

  “What an odd thing to say,” Hayes remarked.

  “I thought so, too,” Carlie agreed. “He said that he liked to swim with them in the Caribbean, in the Bahamas.”

  “Now that might be interesting,” Hayes said.

  She laughed softly. “I’d forgotten, until just now.” She glared at Carson. “He reminds me of a shark. That’s why I thought of it.”

  Carson’s eyebrows arched. “A shark? Me?”

  “Dark and lithe and stealthy and dangerous,” she returned. “Attacks when you least expect it, from cover.”

  “An apt description. Not of you,” Tank told Carson with a grin. “But it would fit the perpetrator.” His expression became grim. “He led me into an ambush that almost cost me my life. And he did it so easily, with such finesse, that I never suspected a thing. She’s right about his personality,” he added, alluding to Carlie. “He put me at ease the minute he walked into my office. He seemed just like one of the guys.”

  “I got that impression, too,” Hayes said. “He put himself right in the middle of a drug bust.” He frowned. “Something else I remember, I had two armed deputies with me. They came up unexpectedly when they heard the call go out over the radio about a traffic stop involving narcotics.” He looked at Tank. “He was shocked to see them. That was just before the other feds showed up.”

  “He might have been planning the same thing for you that he did for me,” Tank suggested.

  “Yes, but there was no reason for him to want me dead.” Hayes tried to make sense of it. “He was in on the arrest. He went to my office with me and waited while I filed the report on my computer, along with a photo my deputy took at the scene of the arrest and one of all of us with the drug haul and the confiscated gold-plated weapons. I wasn’t the only law enforcement officer at the bust.”

  “I don’t think he meant to kill you. Not then, anyway,” Carson interjected with narrowed eyes. He perched himself on the edge of Carlie’s desk, to her obvious dislike. “I think it was something that happened after both shootouts. Something connected, but apart from them.”

  “He was obviously in with the drug cartel,” Hayes replied. He nodded slowly. “He was trying to protect his people from arrest. He failed in my case, but not in yours,” he told Tank.

  “Yes, but he has no reason to come after me now,” Tank said slowly. “I haven’t even spoken about the case since I gave my last report, just before I resigned from the job.”

  Cash Grier leaned against the wall, arms crossed, deep in thought. “Attempted assassination,” he said, nodding toward Hayes. “Kidnapping, for no apparent reason.” He glanced at Tank. “Armed assault, followed much later by stalking and surveillance. He’s after something that happened as a result of both shootings. Maybe not the shootings themselves at all.”

  “What?” Hayes asked.

  Cash shook his head. “I don’t know. But there is a feverish political race going on right now for a congressional seat vacated by the unexpected death of our senior Texas U.S. senator. There’s a special election coming, although someone will be appointed to fill out the rest of his term, which ends this year. There are rumors that the leading candidate has ties to the cartel over the border, and that at least one rival candidate has been blackmailed to quit the race.”

  “I had heard about that,” Tank said. “You think there may be a connection?”

  “There just may be,” Hayes said. “Especially if the man we remember could be part of the drug cartel.”

  “We know he is,” Cash replied. “The problem would be proving his connection. If he’s close to the candidate, that might be enough incentive for him to get rid of any witnesses. Also, he was a rogue DEA agent, a mole. I’m sure he was passing sensitive information to his cronies.”

  “Maybe somebody found him out,” Tank guessed.

  “Yes,” Cash replied. “But who he is—that might be the heart of the problem. If we find out his identity, and it can link him to the cartel and the candidate for the Senate...”

  “That would be a motive for murder,” Hayes agreed. “A very good one.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I HAVE A strange feeling that all this is somehow connected to that special election in the Senate race,” Cash said with narrowed eyes.

  “So do I,” Carlie piped in.

  Carson gave her a mocking look. “Now you’re psychic?” he drawled.

  She smiled blithely. “If I was, you’d be wearing the hilt of that big knife in your mouth,” she said sweetly.

  He lifted an eyebrow and gave her a look that made her blush. Her antagonism hit him on the raw and he retaliated. “Sorry,” he said. “But if that’s flirting, it won’t work. I like my women—” he gave her a cool stare “—prettier, and more physically perfect.”

  Carlie’s face fell like a rock, although she didn’t lower her gaze. She gave him a belligerent stare.

  “That was uncalled for,” Cash Grier said coldly to Carson. “Apologize. Right now.”

  Carson seemed to realize that he’d stepped over a line. “Sorry,” he told Carlie with a face like stone. “He’s right. It was uncalled for.”

  Carlie averted her eyes. She was painfully aware of her lack of attractions. Her sense of morality wouldn’t let her play around with men, and she had less than visible assets, physically. She was more sensitive about her body than most women, for reasons she wasn’t sharing in a public venue. It shouldn’t have bothered her that Mr. Womanizer there didn’t like her. She should be grateful not to be a target. Still, it stung to have her deficiencies pointed out in public. Especially in front of men. She mumbled something and excused herself to go make coffee.

  “Dammit!” Cash snapped at Carson with blazing dark eyes. Tank saw immediately the danger in the man that was carefully concealed most of the time behind a pleasant personality. The anger seemed oddly out of proportion
to what Carson had said. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded.

  Carson shifted restlessly. “Wasn’t thinking,” he said through clenched teeth. It was a rebuke he wouldn’t have taken from any other man. But he respected Grier.

  “Obviously,” Cash replied tersely. His eyes narrowed. “There are a lot of things you don’t know. Snipe at her again and you’ll deal with me. Understood?”

  Carson jerked his head up and down, once.

  “When is the special election?” Tank asked, to break the tension.

  “In the spring,” Hayes remarked.

  “That does give us a little time to investigate,” Cash said, apparently over his anger. “But not a lot.”

  “I’d wiretap every damned Texas DEA agent’s phone,” Carson interjected with cold eyes.

  “Great idea,” Cash said. “You go find us a judge to sign the warrant.”

  Carson sighed. “Okay. I get the point.”

  “Besides that, we don’t know if he’s still with the agency in some satellite office somewhere,” Hayes added. “There’s a good turnover in every agency these days because of funding. Maybe he even quit the agency once he realized we had a photo of him on our computer.”

  “There has to be some way we can trap this chameleon,” Tank said curtly. “Listen, we know he’s targeting me, even though we don’t know why. We know he’s targeting you, too.” He indicated Hayes. “But you have powerful connections. Maybe he’s not willing to tangle with your new father-in-law. But I’m on my own. I don’t have a network behind me.”

  “You do now,” Cash said.

  “Indeed,” Hayes agreed.

  “Thanks,” Tank said, smiling.

  “You’re also forgetting that the late El Ladŕon’s men hired your father-in-law’s temporary employee to kill you,” Carson told Hayes. “If they’re plotting anything, he’ll be the first to know.”

  “Assuming they haven’t rumbled him,” Cash told him. “Never underestimate an organized network of criminals.”

  “Good advice,” Hayes seconded.