by Jeff Carson
He held up a finger. “I think if you’re working with the cartel you stay away from the action. You don’t get involved in it. You don’t get caught up in a firefight. If you did that, you’d be worried about allegiances in the heat of the moment. Your fellow agents would see.” He looked up and faced the trail of dust Wolf and Baine had left behind. “Your fellow deputies would see.”
Patterson went rigid. “What are you saying?” She looked around the circle and stopped at Munford. “Wait. Was she with you guys that whole time?”
“Whoa, easy,” Rachette said. “She’s not working with the cartel.”
“You sure about that, Rachette?” Patterson beamed a look at Munford. “Your track record of reading women’s not too good.”
Munford stood frozen.
“Hey.” Rachette stepped in front of Patterson and put both hands up. “Back off—”
Patterson shoved both of Rachette’s hands away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Hey, guys, cool it!” Wilson was transfixed on something. “Where’s MacLean going?”
MacLean’s truck fired up and showered rocks into the line of SBCSD vehicles as it sped away.
She turned around and quickly realized her mistake. “Shit. Let’s go!”
Chapter 48
Scrolling through one cell phone, Wolf steadied the other on his lap as they bounced down the dirt road.
“Who’re you calling?” Baine asked for the second time.
Wolf ignored him.
“What … is that your phone?”
Wolf found the phone number in Rachette’s cell and memorized it. “Just making a call.”
Baine almost ran off the road and cranked the wheel. “Dang it.”
Wolf eyed him. “What’s wrong? Gotta take another shit?”
Baine wiped his forehead and rubbed his hand on his pants, like he was trying to start a fire with his palm.
Pocketing Rachette’s phone, Wolf began searching one by one through the contacts in Pope’s.
“The trouble with these damn cell phones,” Wolf said, “is that you never remember a number any more. I can remember five of my childhood friends’ phone numbers to this day, and not one of my deputy’s. Kind of messed up, huh?”
Baine let out a noise—something between a gasp and a laugh.
“Ah, here we go.”
Wolf held up Pope’s phone and made a production of pushing his index finger on the screen.
Baine looked over with an uncomprehending frown.
Wolf nodded. “The call.” Waiting patiently, he looked at the screen. “Ah, roaming. It might take a few seconds, I guess.” He put it to his ear and heard nothing, and then there was a patchy ring.
Baine’s face fell.
Wolf dropped the still ringing phone on the floor and pointed the Beretta at Baine.
“I can see the gerbils running in that tiny brain of yours. You’re wondering if you can pretend your way out of this. Like the phone in your pocket isn’t vibrating. Like I didn’t just figure out that you were programmed as number eight in the cell phone of a drug-cartel member.”
Baine sagged and started to pant like an overheated dog. “I had to. They were going to kill my sister and her family if I didn’t do what they said.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. We’re the Sheriff’s Department. We’re stacked with some good firepower ourselves, Deputy Baine. What I do believe is that they sweetened the deal with money.”
Baine swallowed and gripped the steering wheel with ten wriggling fingers.
“I was wondering how someone breaks into your locked desk without you knowing to steal that interview tape, then also manages to erase the file off YouTube that you emailed me that first night.”
Baine shook his head. “I had to, sir. I had—”
“Don’t call me sir. You have no allegiance to me.”
Baine’s breathing stilled and so did his hands. Glancing down at Wolf’s lap, he jerked the wheel to the left and straightened his arms.
The truck revved high and then tilted left as it flew off the steep shoulder, and they sailed into a cluster of lodge pole pines.
Wolf floated in his seat. He put both legs on the dashboard, dropped the gun, and tried to get a handhold on something before the impact.
But it all happened too fast.
His entire world was an explosion of glass, the crunch of metal, a white powdery airbag punching into the side of his head, and then he was weightless. Perhaps dead.
Then came a symphony of springs popping, shafts cracking, aluminum bending, and liquids sloshing as he connected hard with the plastic and leather of the interior.
And then it was over.
Dust and airbag powder stung his corneas as he blinked. It was impossible to see through the cloud of debris, so he closed his eyes and tried to feel his limbs one by one. He was conscious, but other than that he could feel no specific sensation.
With sudden ferocity, his head spun, and with a gasp he opened his eyes.
The dust had settled somewhat, and he saw that everything was upside down. He was on the roof, he realized, lying on his back, and he was staring at Baine, who hung upside down, still strapped in his seat, a deflated airbag, streaked in red, hanging from the steering wheel in front of him.
Baine convulsed, and then jolted awake, and blood erupted from his nostrils like twin geysers.
With a new sense of urgency, Wolf began to move. His right leg was completely numb. Looking down, he saw the bend in his thigh and knew his healing femur fracture had snapped in two.
His arms were painted in warm blood from scrapes and lacerations from the glass, but otherwise free of broken bones and moved well enough.
Baine unclipped himself and landed on Wolf’s leg.
Wolf howled in pain—proof that his broken appendage had plenty of feeling left in it after all.
With labored, gurgling breaths, Baine righted himself, with no regard to how much suffering he put Wolf through as he rolled on top of him.
“I had no choice.” Baine’s face was inches from his, his teeth oozing strings of red saliva while his nose poured hot blood onto Wolf’s neck.
Wolf locked eyes with Baine’s maniacal gaze and kept silent. With slow movements, he began to grope for a weapon along the rooftop underneath him, hoping against all odds that he would find the cold steel of the Beretta among the pebble-sized shards of glass.
“No choice.” Spittle flung out between Baine’s teeth onto Wolf’s closed mouth.
Baine snapped out of his rage and eyed a seatbelt strap hanging down near Wolf’s head.
“Should have worn your seatbelt, Wolf.”
Wolf grabbed the loose strap and wrapped it once around Baine’s neck, then grabbed both ends and pulled as hard as he could.
Baine’s eyes bulged, and he tried to pry his fingers underneath.
With all the strength he could muster, Wolf grunted and pulled harder.
Sagging onto Wolf, Baine’s face turned lobster red as he gagged and squirmed. Then he thrashed, his knees slamming into Wolf’s thigh, sending fire-hose pulses of pain through his body.
Baine saw the effect, so he started running in place on his knees.
“Ahhh!” Wolf leaned up as hard as he could, connecting a head-butt against Baine’s nose. Then another. Then another.
Baine sagged to Wolf’s side, and Wolf steered him onto his back on the felt covered roof. He pulled himself on top of Baine, his grip on the seatbelt strap relentless, but the pain in his leg was almost too much to bear.
Baine’s face turned bright red and his puffy lips began moving, pleading.
Wolf let up the slack and Baine sucked in a desperate breath.
“Tell me everything.” Wolf’s own voice was muffled behind a growing symphony of ringing bells.
“I had to, Wolf. You have to believe me.”
“Was it you? Did you kill Sarah?”
“No. Please. I’ll tell you everything. I can’t breathe.”
; Wolf released a little more pressure. A veil of black started to creep in from the edges of his vision.
“It was Lancaster. He did it. I’ve just been reporting to these guys. Just keeping them informed. That’s it. It was that big white-skinned guy, Pope. He came to me a couple of months before the election. Told me I’d be working for them from now on, or he’d kill my sister and her family.”
Wolf shook his head, trying to shake the darkness away.
“I love them, Wolf.”
Wolf tightened his grip, and the darkness seemed to recede. “I loved my family, too. I loved Sarah.”
“It was … Lancaster.”
“You knew he’d killed Sarah and you let him live? You could have told me from day one. You bastard, we could have taken them down.”
“I was scared—” Baine made some choking noises and his eyes rolled.
Wolf let up again on his grip. “You deserve to die,” he said between desperate breaths. The darkness was taking hold again, and his vision tilted.
Baine’s eyes widened, and then relaxed. “I almost got strangled just like this for that taped interview with Gail Olson. I thought I was doing what the cartel wanted, keeping you in power so I could be their inside man in the new department. I didn’t know that Lancaster was already in place and they wanted MacLean to win the election.”
Baine was stalling, letting Wolf slip further and further into the darkness, and there was nothing Wolf could do about it. He felt his grip slackening on the vinyl straps. His arms began to shake and go numb.
Baine held still and talked faster. “Man, that Pope guy was pissed. I had to go back and get rid of that video. That was when Lancaster and I became acquainted. He said he’d get rid of MacLean’s copy. Said I was lucky to be alive, and I couldn’t screw up again or else my sister and her family were dead.”
Wolf shook his head. “Shut up.”
“But I guess he couldn’t get rid of MacLean’s video copy. The sheriff put it in a wall safe in his house or something. I got rid of your copy. Remember when I was there that day at your house? I just pretended to put it back in your desk. You were messed up on pain pills. And that Scotch you were drinking.”
Wolf’s arm shook, almost giving way. “Shut up.” He pulled on the belt.
Baine’s head rose fast.
His head thumped, like a bowling ball had hit him in the nose, and he collapsed onto Baine’s chest. His ears were filled with a thousand bells chiming at once.
He felt himself being rolled over by Baine’s strong hands. Blinking rapidly, his vision wavered like he was bobbing in fifty-foot seas.
Baine straddled him and pressed the seatbelt across his neck. “I had no choice, Wolf. I had no choice about all this. And you should have worn your seatbelt.”
Wolf let out a hacking noise as the strap dug harder into his neck. He felt and heard a crunch in his throat. Trying to suck in a breath, his diaphragm convulsed.
And then, mercifully, Baine let up on his grip.
Wolf’s lungs wheezed as he gasped for air, and it was the most painful yet relieving thing he’d ever felt.
“You know, your wife made those noises after I shot her in the chest that first time.” Baine’s red teeth glimmered.
Wolf’s eyes went wide and he punched the side of Baine’s head as hard as he could.
Baine ignored the feeble gesture and pressed again on the strap, cutting off the air once more.
“God damn, she was so beautiful. You really messed up with her, didn’t you? David Wolf, otherwise the perfect boy scout, a worthless screw-up like the rest of us when it comes to women.”
Baine’s cheeks shook as he pressed as hard as he could.
Wolf’s face felt like it was going to explode.
“Allow me,” a voice came from somewhere else, and then the barrel of a pistol pressed against Baine’s forehead.
There was a boom and scorching heat, then choking gunpowder smoke, and then nothing but darkness. Ringing bells, and darkness.
Chapter 49
A pair of monarch butterflies floated near her perfect face, flapping against the warm wind as if striving to stay near. Her smile was too bright to look at directly. Wolf had to squint so hard that his surroundings became an overexposed wash of light, but he was content to lean back and close his eyes, knowing she lay on his shoulder, her straw hair tickling him softly as it blew on the freshening breeze.
Cracking his eyes, he saw vivid blue orbs filling his vision. “You gonna wake up?”
He smiled and nodded.
“Wolf.”
He blinked.
“Hey.”
He searched for the voice and found it in a wheelchair next to him.
“How the hell do you pee?” Luke leaned forward and lifted Wolf’s bed sheet.
The blue-wrapped plaster encased his entire right leg, crotch area, waist, and part of his left thigh. A bar connected them both to keep them immobile for the time being. According to the doctor, he’d be stuck in this peeing-dog position for two weeks before some of the cast came off.
“I was wondering why my leg was so warm.” He grabbed a sip of water from the bottle next to him.
She laughed. “You were dreaming about Sarah.”
Reality came back to him: beeping machines, a button for pain medication, a button for his bed, crappy daytime television.
“I was?”
She nodded. “You said her name.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I need more meds.”
“They got me on Percocet. Good stuff.”
He nodded and cracked an eye. “How are you feeling?”
She looked down at her leg, which was in a cast and jutting out in pike position.
“I don’t think I can even get in that position,” he said, “and they put a cast on you like that?”
“You said that joke yesterday.”
He laughed and winced as pain spread underneath his cast. “I need more meds.”
“I wanted to come by, read you this email before I get out.”
“The all-this-was-for-nothing email? I don’t know if I want to hear it.”
They stared at one another for a second, both knowing that he was lying. He wanted to hear it, and he owed Luke everything for what she had done for him.
This Agent Tedescu email he’d been hearing so much about supposedly explained Wolf’s innocence, but if he and Luke had simply turned themselves in and let the FBI go about its business of taking down the cartel, Sarah’s justice would’ve been left in the hands of lawyers. High-priced cartel lawyers like the ones who had gotten Gail Olson off for possession of twenty-two pounds of marijuana and over one hundred thousand dollars, reduced it to nothing, and then turned it into a counter-suit against the Ashland Police Department.
Witnesses would’ve been murdered.
Sooner or later, it would’ve ended the way it had.
“Let’s hear it,” Wolf said.
Luke cleared her throat and read off the screen of her phone.
Dear Agent Frye,
This message is to you, who I feel I owe more to than our SAC, who we both know I’ve never gotten along with since Farmington, and to the agents of the Denver field office of the FBI. When you are done reading this and acting as you feel fit, please share this with them.
I am sending this email to explain the conduct of myself and Special Agent Paul Smith in the last three years.
I’m pretty certain I’m being hunted and that my days are numbered. In fact, I’m sure I’m on my final day of life and I need to clear my conscience, and make sure the Bureau knows that my wife and children knew absolutely nothing about what Agent Smith and I have done.
I have given Special Agent Kristen Luke the location and access to a storage locker in which we have placed physical evidence that will prove the existence of the Ghost Cartel. In case the information in that storage locker is not self-explanatory, or if the information is gone because the Ghost Cartel has beaten Special Agent Luke to it,
which is a very real possibility, I want to explain everything. Lives are at stake.
In case it is in dispute, let me make it perfectly clear that Special Agent Luke knows nothing about what we have done. She has been a solid, respectable partner who has been dedicated to upholding the oath she took when she joined the Bureau.
Agent Smith and I have known about the existence of the Ghost Cartel—the players, the members, the exact methods of operation—for over three years.
Two years ago, Agent Smith figured out that a corporation named WCB Holdings had purchased some rural properties in Byron County. Upon further investigation, and with the help of a real-estate agent named Sarah Muller from Rocky Points, Colorado, we found WCB Holdings to be a shell company for the Ghost Cartel.
Smith and I staked out and took extensive pictures of these properties, proving they were illegal marijuana grow facilities. We followed their business activities for months, documenting and taking pictures of the operation, which included the smuggling of vast amounts of marijuana from Colorado to other western states including California, Nevada, Idaho, and New Mexico, all funneled through Ashland Moving and Storage, located in Ashland, Colorado.
Just recently, we learned that the Ghost Cartel had again approached Sarah Muller, once more under the guise of WCB Holdings, to purchase two more properties, this time north, just outside of Rocky Points, Colorado.
This is where I tell you about my and Agent Smith’s illegal activities. I’ll spare you the long story explaining the whys, and say only that the humiliation we had to endure after the Farmington raid went south, and the aftermath, and the demotion, and the split-up, and how we were treated as less than agents from that point on, was too much for us to bear. We were changed. We were broken, and we broke our oaths. I cannot speak for Agent Smith, but I’m not proud of it.
After we compiled a detailed case file against the Ghost Cartel, instead of bringing it to our superiors, we took a copy of the entire file to the cartel itself. We made it clear that, upon our deaths, we had a mechanism in place to inform the Bureau about everything if harm should come to us. Our silence cost them a fee, and we’ve been collecting that fee for the last few years. I won’t discuss the exact amount, but know that my wife was not aware of this payment or its source. She was under the impression that I’d inherited money from my late father’s estate.
