“You’re new,” the woman said, in almost accusatory tones.
Alex stood her ground. “Yeah? So?”
“So how do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t have to. They do,” Alex said, indicating the meeting room with a backward jerk of her head. “Listen, I don’t have to take any shit. You don’t like new people? Fine. Sorry I spoke to you.”
The other woman hesitated only a second before huffing out a laugh. “You’ve got spunk, I’ll say that much for you. Alice Johnson,” she announced as she held out her hand.
Alex took it and shook it once, firmly. “Misty Jenkins,” she replied.
“Well Misty, to answer you, yes, that was a good meeting. Ever since Harvey went to jail, we’ve needed a guy like him to step up and lead. Looks like we’ve found him.” Alice resumed walking, with Alex hurrying to make up the step she’d lost when the other woman started off abruptly.
“So listen,” she said. “Like you said, I’m new. Am I supposed to know his name?”
“Sure, why not?” Alice asked.
“Because I don’t,” Alex said, giving a small sound of exasperation. “They didn’t introduce him. Was I the only newbie there?”
“Guess so,” Alice replied. “His name’s Jim Atkins. Joined a few months ago, and really livened up the group. We’d been kind of lost since Harvey got picked up.”
This was the second time she’d mentioned Harvey in the same context, but Alex didn’t want to seem too eager to know too much. She could look that one up on the internet, probably. Her curiosity about everything else would have to wait, too. Now that she knew for sure the Patriots were behind Dawn’s attack, she had some leverage. Only now, it looked as though she might be in a position to foil the next one. She’d have to be careful not to give herself away before she could do some real good.
~~~
Dylan was on his way to Tempe in a moving truck with the boys on the seat beside him when Alex’s text pinged him with her special ring. He didn’t dare look at it while he was moving, and it was only a few more miles to the house. Besides, she’d been ignoring his texts all week, and she might as well learn what that felt like. He kept driving.
A few of the guys from the new office had generously said they’d help him unload, and he was grateful for the help. He’d had plenty in Dodge. Friends, co-workers at the park and even Alex’s dad had come to help. He hadn’t had time to make friends in the new neighborhood yet, since the week went quickly in wrapping up his old job and preparing everything for the move.
Now he pulled up to the house in his rental truck and gladly turned the boys loose in the fenced back yard. The yard wasn’t in great shape. Looked like the previous renters had kept a dog back there. He’d look into whether his lease would allow that. A dog would be great for Juan and Davi.
He greeted the new co-workers that he was meeting in person for the first time. Chagrined he hadn’t thought of it himself, he accepted a beer from a cooler one of the guys brought. He’d order pizza about the time the truck was half-empty, and hope they didn’t make such short work of the rest that the pizza came too late.
Before long, he was directing traffic rather than unloading himself. There were so many of them he couldn’t keep up. As they sat on the porch eating the pizza, one of them asked him why he’d rented a three-bedroom house if he wasn’t giving each of the boys their own room. They’d all wondered why nothing was going in the third bedroom.
Dylan found himself explaining with a red face that his girlfriend would be moving in, and he was saving that room for her. This garnered a few good-natured jokes about why there’d be separate bedrooms for them, but since no one knew him well enough to really dig, it stayed relatively clean. When they’d finished their pizza and beer, his new co-workers gave him a cheerful goodbye and promised they’d show him the ropes Monday. It looked like he’d be able to enjoy this posting. Now if he only knew Alex’s intentions.
That made him remember she’d sent him a text that he hadn’t had a chance to look at. It was cryptic. Needed time to clear her head. And ‘Whatever happens, don’t hate me.” What the hell? What did she mean by that? He immediately called, but there was no answer.
“Call me,” he said. After a pause, he added. “I love you.”
All night he chewed on the possible meaning of that sentence. What could she be doing that could cause him to hate her? He’d managed to put the boys’ bunk bed together and get them a simple dinner of canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches before putting them to bed. Now he sat amongst the jumble of the living room and pondered.
The more he thought about it, the more uneasy he became. Could she be messing around with investigating the Patriots after he’d told her to stay away from them? If that turned out to be the case, he’d have some harsh words for her. Or maybe he’d just hug her tightly and thank his lucky stars she was okay.
If she was okay.
Oh, God, let her be okay.
TWENTY-TWO
As soon as she was home and had checked in with her housemates, Alex went to the computer. Who was this Harvey her informant had mentioned? She wanted to see if there was anything on Jim Atkins, also.
Harvey Lloyd turned out to be the previous leader of the Patriots, as she’d surmised. Five years ago, he had been a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend, whose gruesome death under a speeding freight train had also taken the life of her unborn child. Harvey had mounted a defense based on his claim that her death wasn’t murder but a suicide.
Because of his involvement with the Patriots and suspected previous murders, the jury had convicted him on circumstantial evidence. A posthumous paternity test indicated he was the father of the dead woman’s child, although she was married to someone else. The woman’s name did not appear in the article.
That was odd. She’d never seen or known of an adult’s name being withheld. No newspaper would leave out that information, unless a lot of political pull or money was involved. Even if they had, someone had to know. The judge, jurors and attorneys in the case. The police. She’d have to wait until tomorrow to start digging for that information, since it was already too late at night to reach anyone who could help her.
Still puzzling over that mystery, Alex turned her efforts to finding out what she could about Jim Atkins. A simple Google search turned up over eight million hits, and Alex despaired of finding him unless his picture appeared. Even going to the images section seemed an overwhelming task. If she found his picture there, she had no guarantee of it leading anywhere with substantial information. After viewing page after page of pictures of men named Jim Atkins, Jim Adkins, Jim Akins and the occasional woman—who knew what they were doing in the results?—Alex left the site open and went to bed with sore, red eyes.
When she woke the next morning, something had clicked for Alex in her sleep. It couldn’t be, of course. The timing didn’t work out. Whatever her subconscious brain had connected during sleep, Harvey Lloyd’s dead girlfriend couldn’t have been her mother if the woman had been pregnant only five years ago.
Her mother would have been…forty? Thirty-nine at least, depending on the date of the murder. So it was possible, just not probable. She dismissed the thought as wishful thinking. Not that she wished her mother dead, but a break in that investigation would have been welcome. She still didn’t know where to start.
It was still early, so Alex ate breakfast, showered, and then started her search through the pages of Jim Atkins images again, waiting for nine a.m. when her friend in the Pima County sheriff’s department, Lt. Tom Wells, might be in his office, even on a Sunday. She hoped he would introduce her to someone in Pinal County she could use as a resource for locating the information about Harvey Lloyd’s murder victim.
Alex was starting on her second cup of coffee when she found Jim Atkin’s picture. She sucked in her breath, bringing with it a scalding sip of coffee. She choked, sputtered and jumped up to clean up the coffee she’d sprayed across the table and her l
aptop. Near-disaster averted, she looked again. Yes, that was definitely the man she’d seen leading the meeting.
She clicked on the picture, and then on the Visit Page button. Unbelievably, her luck held when it took her to his professional profile on a popular business-oriented social media site. What shocked her even more was the fact that according to his profile, Jim Atkins was a senior park ranger at Saguaro National Park.
How in hell had a bigoted person like the leader of the Patriots hidden himself in the mostly-liberal Park Service? Why would he jeopardize his job by involving himself in an organization that could at best be called radical, if not criminal? It made no sense to Alex. Maybe the Park Service wasn’t as liberal as she’d thought. She knew from her experience talking with and even dating some Park Service employees, especially Dylan, they were almost universally concerned about the environment, and she’d never met one she would call racist. Yet, Jim Atkins clearly was racist.
She wondered if Dylan knew him. It would be a long shot. Dylan hadn’t served at Saguaro, and hadn’t been back in Arizona for long. Still, the Park Service was like a smallish town. It seemed everyone knew everyone else. Maybe they had conventions or something. Thinking of Dylan made her remember they’d been missing each other with their messages for over a week, and he still deserved an apology from her for running out on him last weekend.
She looked at her cell phone. Eight-thirty on a Sunday morning. If she knew the boys, they’d be up and would have made sure Dylan was up to make their weekend pancake breakfast. She picked up her piece of cold toast, the meager breakfast she’d fixed to go with her coffee. The first bite was like ashes in her mouth.
What was she thinking? She could be with Dylan and the boys right now, laughing, making the pancakes and basking in family love. Instead, she was alone, estranged from her dad, incommunicado with her Nana and Dylan. She’d cut herself off from everyone she loved. She had to fix this, and fast.
Full of love and regret, she dialed Dylan’s number. This was too important for a text. A sleepy-voiced Dylan answered, and when she heard his voice, Alex choked on her tears.
“Dylan?” Her timorous question was barely audible, even to her.
“Alex, is that you? It’s about time you called. What the hell did you mean by your last text? Are you messing around with the Patriots?” Dylan’s initial sleepiness had given way to irritation, judging by his tone. Not even a hello.
Alex forgot about her apology and answered Dylan in kind. “Well, excuse me for doing my job. I need to know if you know a ranger at Saguaro by the name of Jim Atkins.”
“What? What the hell, Alex? You don’t call me for a week and all you can say is do I know some random guy? No, I don’t know him. Why? Has he asked you out?”
Alex rolled her eyes. This wasn’t going at all the way she expected, and she didn’t care for Dylan’s tone. Without answering, she ended the call. There was no point in talking to Dylan if he was going to act like this, and he didn’t know Jim Atkins, so there was nothing more to say.
~~~
Dylan stared at his phone. Un-fucking-believable. She’d hung up on him! What the hell had gotten into Alex lately? He had half a mind to drive to Casa Grande and have it out with her, but he had the boys and no support system yet in Alex’s absence. That thought didn’t even make any sense. If Alex had been here in the first place, this ridiculous phone tag wouldn’t be going on. Besides, he still had unpacking and arranging to do. He had tomorrow off to get the boys registered for the upcoming school year, and then he’d be working for the rest of the week.
Alex should be here already, registering for her next semester and maybe looking for a job. He had enough to deal with. She was an adult and responsible for her own shit.
Replaying the conversation in his mind, he realized he may have come on a bit strong. He hadn’t even said hello before he laid into her. Maybe he owed her an apology. After breakfast, he’d call back and see if he could undo the damage. Maybe he could persuade her to come up to Tempe and move in. That would get her away from those damn Patriots, if that’s what she was doing.
It would give them a chance to heal, as well. Surely, this was just a bump in the road. It had to be. He couldn’t lose her now, just when everything was working out for them to be together.
After breakfast, Davi made a nuisance of himself whining about his toys still being packed until Dylan got the kitchen cleaned up and took care of putting the boys’ room together. Juan wanted to know why he couldn’t have a room to himself when there was an empty bedroom, and Dylan had just about lost his last reserve of patience by the time he settled everyone down. He could only hope he wouldn’t have to go back on what he’d told Juan—that the extra room belonged to Alex. On the other hand, he’d prefer it if she moved into his room. He just wasn’t sure she was ready for that kind of commitment yet.
Dylan didn’t want to call Alex in this frame of mind, so he turned on the TV for some pre-season football and had the one beer he would allow himself. When the game was over, he felt able to cope with a call to Alex, even if she was still mad. The only problem was the call went straight to voice mail. That meant she’d missed at least one call. Dylan had a bad feeling about it, but he couldn’t point to anything specific. He left a message apologizing and asking Alex to call him so they could have a better conversation.
TWENTY-THREE
Alex had gotten as far as calling Lt. Well’s office, where she had to leave a message, when she got the call from her group leader in the Patriots. The operation Atkins had mentioned yesterday was going down this afternoon, and she needed to be at her post in half an hour.
Near panic, Alex had barely enough time to get into her wig and makeup before showing up at the assigned spot. On the way, she left a message for Wells that they’d moved up the timing of the operation and she might be in trouble. Before she could send a similar text to Dylan, she was there.
Alex and four others were assigned to lookout positions overlooking the highway at five-mile intervals. No one bothered to fill them in on what was going to happen or where, just that if they saw any sort of law enforcement vehicle traveling toward Casa Grande, they should text a warning to a phone number given to them to program into speed dial on their phones.
Alex’s heart was beating fast enough to worry her. She wanted to know what was going on, but didn’t dare ask. She drove to the coordinates provided her, parked, and then hiked to the spot where she could watch Highway 8.
Since she was on her own, Alex took the opportunity to text her whereabouts to Lt. Wells’ private cell phone and to Dylan, along with what little information she had. It was the best she could do, now that she was in the thick of it. She’d had to give her cell phone number to the man who assigned her to her present location. If she left it, she had no doubt they could track her.
Too late, Dylan’s warnings sank home. She was involved in something illegal, and even though she didn’t know what, if something bad happened, she would be as legally responsible as those who actually did whatever it was. She could only hope that her warnings to Wells would mitigate her culpability.
What would she do if she saw a law enforcement vehicle? Could she get away with not warning whoever was at that number? No, it was too dangerous. It could invite retaliation. The best she could do was text Wells, or maybe call 911, but the latter would be iffy. They might consider it a prank, anyway.
As her mind busily jumped from one consideration to another, time seemed to telescope from one extreme to another. The half an hour she’d been at her post went from feeling like five minutes to two hours before she got the signal to stand down. Now she was supposed to return to the house where they’d originally met before going to their assigned locations. Was it over?
She found the others in a buzz of excitement with a frisson of worried tension. Everyone was talking at once, and it took some time for the last people to come in from their posts. Once that happened, the leader of the group signaled for quiet. “The missi
on was successful. You need to know that one of the individuals on our target list was eliminated this afternoon and your participation assisted in seeing that justice was served.
You don’t need to concern yourself; this person was a scumbag and a drug dealer. He’s been slipping across the border with cocaine for years and we finally caught up with him. We will all be going to a safe location to lay low until the hunt for his killer has died down, which should take about a week. Once they figure out who he was, the law won’t bother wasting their time in investigating further. Who has people that will look for them if they don’t show for a week?”
Alex and one other raised their hands.
“Drive your vehicles home. One of us will follow and pick you up. If you can make an excuse that will satisfy anyone who’s at home, do it. Only bring what you need for a week. It will be over by then.”
Alex was stunned. A week! She should be in Tempe already, registering for school. A week could be too late to get the classes she needed, and Dylan would worry. She’d also involved Lt. Wells, who would be worried and call back. If any of the people she’d be spending the next week with got curious about phone calls or texts, she’d be in serious trouble.
Worse, she'd never stopped to think that her plan might involve being away for days at a time. The makeup that was so necessary to her disguise wouldn’t last that long. She’d have to hope there’d be some privacy to rejuvenate her disguise. Why hadn’t she listened to Dylan?
Before she knew it, the others were breaking up and a man in his forties was looking at her impatiently. “Hurry up, I’m supposed to take you there. Go take your car home.”
In a fog of disbelief, Alex drove home. Inside, it was quiet. Lisa and Nat must not be home. She didn’t dare leave a note explaining everything, in case her ride came in and found it. Instead, she scribbled a note saying ‘back in a week, see you then’ and packed a backpack with what she’d need, including her makeup.
Fatal Intent (Desert Heat Book 3) Page 14
