The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  But she didn’t.

  Erin had barely hung up—hadn’t even pulled her computer back on her lap—when the phone rang a second time.

  Rick Thomas. At eleven-fifteen at night.

  “What’s up?” she asked as she pushed the call button on her smartphone.

  Smartphone. At least there was something about her with a semblance of intelligence.

  “What do you know about Charles Cook?”

  “He worked hard,” she said. “Took good care of his house. Liked to hunt and fish. That’s about it.”

  “Can you do some checking? Find out if maybe the guy was into something that pissed someone off?”

  “You mean, find out who really killed him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve already got someone working on it,” Erin said. She’d made the call that afternoon—and would’ve told Rick if he’d hadn’t walked out of her office. “Who?”

  “A guy from Reed City. He’s done some work for me before. I trust him.”

  “Any ties to Sheriff Johnson?”

  “No.”

  “Or to any of his deputies?”

  “No.”

  “Fine, then. Let me know what you find out.”

  “I planned to.”

  “And send me the bill.”

  “I intend to.”

  “Thank you. Good night—”

  “Wait—”

  Erin stared at the display on her phone—at the little letters call disconnected.

  He had until tomorrow. And then he was going to tell her who Steve Miller was.

  Tonight she’d give him a break because it was late.

  And because she’d just found out that he’d lost his only brother in the same accident that had killed his father. He’d been eighteen at the time.

  Rick hadn’t really expected to see the nondescript aluminum boat come around the ridge. But he stood, letting the hand on his gun drop when he saw Sarge give him the familiar salute—the only form of greeting the man ever gave.

  Rick, who hadn’t seen his sergeant since before he went to prison, returned the gesture. And waited, without a word, as the older man, dressed in his usual black jacket and beige slacks, boarded Rick’s boat and took a seat.

  With one hand on the wheel, he let the engine idle and guided the boat along the cliff—far enough away to keep afloat, but close enough to stay hidden from above.

  And then, in two sentences, he gave his report.

  “Shit.” That single word, instead of the colorful string of curses the sergeant would more typically have uttered, was not a good sign.

  “Tell me,” Rick said, frowning as he and Sarge looked at each other.

  Two hard men, trained in special operations—men who’d killed and had blood on their souls.

  “Woodburn is dead.” Saul. Which left Rick the only living member of their team of four. Besides Sarge, of course.

  Rick felt nothing. The same nothing he’d been feeling since he’d seen Charles Cook’s dead body on the floor at the Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security office.

  His mind cranked up, thoughts flying rapid-fire, organizing themselves into lists of suspects. Motives. Safety measures.

  “Someone knows about us.”

  Sarge didn’t say anything. His pursed lips and unblinking stare were answer enough.

  “When did Woodburn get it?” Jack had been dead for more than a year.

  “Three months ago. In Tennessee.”

  In Tennessee. Another boarding house. Another widow in another town with another room to let. In Tennessee—Kit Matthews’s residence, not Saul Woodburn’s.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Drove his car over a mountain. Sheriff’s report said he was drunk. But I didn’t find any alcohol or bar receipts when I collected his things.”

  “Woodburn didn’t drink.”

  Not ever. How the man had survived the life, slept at night, without a little whiskey now and then to drown the memories, to slow down the instincts, Rick had no idea.

  He hadn’t known Woodburn all that well. Saul—Kit—had specialized in human trafficking, and their paths hadn’t crossed as often as his and Brady’s had. Sarge had been the only one Woodburn had ever warmed to.

  “I’m sorry,” Rick said now. Rick had lost a work associate. Sarge had lost another friend.

  “It happens,” was all the man said. His bent shoulders, the glistening eyes, told another story.

  One of which they wouldn’t speak.

  “You talk to Sharon Hampton?” Rick asked. Kit Matthews’s landlady. “Yes.”

  “She didn’t say anything? Have any message for you?” Rick thought of the matchbook. A message from Brady? Until he knew for sure, he couldn’t say anything to anyone about that matchbook. Brady had left it to him—specifically—and only to him. Their covert team protocol stated that he couldn’t talk about it until he knew he wouldn’t be putting other lives, including Sarge’s, in jeopardy.

  “No.”

  “Was she suspicious?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I should pay her a visit.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  They were getting a little close to shore. Rick steered the boat out several feet. “What’s going on, Sarge?”

  “I wish to hell I knew.”

  13

  “If someone wants us all dead, why take us out a year apart?”

  “Why kill the others and frame you?”

  “And what are their plans for you?”

  “We have to assume that our cover is blown. Someone is on to us.” The sergeant’s voice was low. Gravelly. And calm. “Brady and Saul were still working as part of the team when they died, but you’ve been out for a year. The fact that you’re the target tells me this goes way back. We have to assume you’re next.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And that whoever’s after us is as sophisticated, as highly trained, as highly connected, as we were.”

  Rick had already come to that conclusion.

  “We’re on our own. Chances are they’re not.”

  “But do we have to be?” Rick hadn’t just called Sarge to commiserate. And he’d long since passed the day when he asked anyone for advice.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Call our people. Get us connected again.” Sarge was the only one who could. He’d been the point man. The only visible member of their team. The contact with “their people.”

  Sarge just stared at him.

  “What?”

  “I quit special ops right after Kit died. The team was gone and I wasn’t going to start all over. I’m just regular army now.”

  Shit. “Get back in.”

  “I can’t. You know that.”

  “Call someone. My God, man, you have connections to the top.”

  Sarge shook his head. “Now that we’ve disbanded, the new secretary of defense isn’t acknowledging that our team ever existed.”

  And a new president had taken office just before Rick had quit. One who probably hadn’t been briefed on their small task force.

  “I had a secure line. I no longer have it,” Sarge added.

  “What about outside connections? Businessmen with clout?”

  “I was never directly connected to any of them.”

  “What about the yacht? The little vacation Brady and I had…”

  “I don’t know who owned that yacht.”

  “You said it was Roberts.” A rich businessman they’d once investigated for large-scale drug and illegal weapon trafficking and had ultimately saved when they discovered he’d been set up by his disgruntled son. Roberts, Junior, had been in the trafficking business and was now, thanks to them, serving several life terms in jail.

  “What I said was that a benefactor had provided the yacht.

  Rick thought back. A benefactor. The mysterious Roberts had been that. Had he made an incorrect assump
tion?

  But Brady had, too. They’d referred to Roberts during those few days. Toasting him.

  “I let the powers that be know that I needed a yacht and a few days of protected R and R for the two of you,” Sarge said.

  “Protected?”

  “That’s right. You were guarded the entire time.”

  “And the woman Brady took up with?”

  “She was provided, too—by the owner of the yacht, I assume. There was also supposed to have been one for you.”

  Rick shrugged. As he recalled, Maria, Brady’s companion, had had a friend. Rick hadn’t been interested. “Why?”

  “Brady had just killed a young kid, a girl. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “He’d been shot at in the Mexican desert, was returning fire when a four-year-old girl came running out from what was supposed to have been a deserted building.”

  No wonder Brady had been so set on staying drunk.

  “He wanted out right then and there. I knew if the two of you were together for a few days, Brady would pull through.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You weren’t meant to.”

  But Brady had saved a matchbook they’d used during those days of R and R, his days of recovery. So maybe the matchbook really had been just a memento. A thank-you.

  Rick would bet his life it was not.

  “Who else knew about that trip?”

  “Other than the agents who made sure no one messed with you, only the two women.” Only one of them had ever been to the yacht. Brady’s woman. Maria.

  What about that trip was so important to Brady? Something he’d expect Rick to know about…

  Rick had to find the woman.

  And they needed access to inaccessible information. Secure information. Who owned the yacht?

  “Surely, after fifteen years, there’s someone you know. Someone you can call.”

  “I’ve already made a couple of calls,” Sarge said.

  Rick waited.

  “After I got your message I put in a call regarding the Temple EMA office.”

  “And?”

  “Word is there’ve been a couple of emails removed from the secure server.”

  “Removed when?”

  “Over the weekend.”

  “To frame me?”

  “Could be. Doesn’t look like it. If it had been before the murder, maybe. But afterward, you damned sure couldn’t get into that building.”

  “Who did?”

  “It’s not so much access to the building that was necessary. Whoever removed the posts had to have access to the secure server after the murder, which you didn’t.”

  Frowning, Rick eyed his sergeant. “Something’s going on inside Homeland Security?”

  “Could be.”

  “You’re thinking terrorist threat here?”

  “I’m thinking I don’t know.”

  “And that we’re somehow tied to it?”

  “It’s conceivable. Collectively, with the human trafficking we’ve exposed, the drug cartels we’ve broken, the weapons we’ve confiscated, the four of us have done a lot of damage to a lot of people.”

  “I know Tom Watkins’s contacts. Do you have a log of the rest?”

  “Not officially, no.”

  Of course not.

  “I’d say that’s where we need to start.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Sarge pulled out a flip phone and tossed it to Rick. “It’s scrambled,” he said. “I’ll call you with a list of names. Don’t answer. I’ll leave a message you can decipher. And then pray like hell.”

  Erin had a felony assault case Tuesday morning. She met her client, a young man who’d gone after his sister’s ex-boyfriend when he’d found out that the man had date-raped her. It only took Erin half an hour to work a deal, getting him down to misdemeanor assault with six months’ suspended sentence and a year’s probation. If he stayed clean, his record would be expunged. The ex-boyfriend had been charged with rape.

  The twenty-year-old, his mother and his eighteen-year-old sister were all in tears, and his father looked close to them, as they thanked her and said goodbye outside the Ludington courtroom.

  She was on her cell, calling Ben Pope, the private investigator in Reed City who was as discreet as he was good at ferreting out information, before she got to the bottom of the courthouse steps.

  Pope called her back an hour later.

  “I’ve barely begun, but I got a hit already and it’s pertinent enough to let you know right away.”

  Erin, who’d just arrived back at work, shut the door of her office. “Thanks, Ben. What’ve you got?”

  “I showed Cook’s picture to a guy I know. He recognized it. Said Cook bought a semiautomatic nine millimeter a couple of weeks ago.”

  “He’s with the office of Emergency Management. Wouldn’t he have access to weapons, anyway?”

  “Not Cook. He was an emergency management technician. His primary job was to manage sites during emergencies. Winter weather emergencies, for instance. Natural disasters. That kind of thing. He was responsible for setting up aid sites, coordinating agencies, keeping the government informed. He had EMT training. No weapons training. He could be sent anywhere, but never actually left Michigan. During nonemergency times he was supposed to check incoming data and so on. And beyond all that, he didn’t buy this gun legally. That’s what caught my attention. He didn’t want anyone to know he had it.”

  “He was afraid of something.”

  “Maybe. Or angry with someone.”

  “Charles didn’t seem the type.”

  “I’m not deep enough into this to know his ‘type.’ Not yet. I’ll get back to you when I do.”

  “Thanks, Ben.”

  Hanging up, Erin started to dial Rick Thomas and then, remembering the night before, when he’d ended the call so abruptly, she stopped. Clearly, if she hoped to get answers to her questions, she had to meet with her very frustrating client face-to-face.

  Rick stayed on the boat most of the night. He wanted to dock, with a line full of fish, after the marina caretaker had arrived at work to ensure his alibi. He also wanted to give Sarge time to get out of the state.

  And he needed the peace.

  With the temperature dropping to forty-five degrees—downright balmy—he even managed to doze for an hour or two.

  He caught another hour on Steve’s couch while Steve went to an occupational therapy class. They were teaching him how to do simple assembly jobs.

  He spent the rest of the morning flying a kite Steve helped him make, smiling as the older man took such obvious pleasure from making it soar.

  When lunchtime rolled around, he walked Steve to the cafeteria and said goodbye. Having noticed the brownies he was getting for dessert, Steve didn’t cry.

  Before Rick left, he returned to Steve’s room to grab the jigsaw puzzle he’d hidden in the back of his closet more than a year ago.

  Watching his rearview mirror as he took side roads back to town, Rick ran a mental check, again, on all the jobs he could remember over the past fifteen years. Focusing on those that were out of the country, but not bypassing the domestic jobs, either.

  He was looking for anyone who might have a grudge. Anyone who might be suspicious. Anyone who’d want him dead.

  Making a list of jobs that fit those criteria wasn’t hard.

  Harder was finding ones that didn’t.

  Tom’s work, whether infiltrating a business, becoming part of it to gather enough evidence so someone else could come in and make arrests, or outright stealing things from those who trusted him, hadn’t been nice. If the job had been easy, anyone could’ve done it. Which was why Steve Miller had a bank account that could take the outrageous bail hit without much pain.

  The tires whirred a steady rhythm as he drove.

  His attorney should be getting some information on Cook for him. And he’d have a coded list from Sarge within hours, as well.

  He drove straight through
town, slowing down on Main Street to make sure he was seen, and then turned toward his place. It was a quiet, sunny Tuesday afternoon. The type of day that bothered Rick.

  Because it could lull you into a false sense of security.

  Because he couldn’t see what was happening in the dark corners.

  Because something always was….

  His fingers tensed on the wheel as he pulled into his drive. Someone had been there in his absence. There were fresh tire marks in the dirt an inch to the left of the tracks he’d made the day before.

  Tracks that were as large as his.

  The front of the house appeared undisturbed. The small clear plastic bag with the advertising flyer was right where he’d last seen it—hanging from the screen door handle.

  Someone had been in the back. Sometime the previous night, before dew had gathered in the grass, based on the moisture pooled in one set of male-size footprints. Maneuvering his truck slowly, Rick steered with his right hand, opening the panel behind the driver’s door with his left. Seconds later, his hand wrapped around the barrel of his loaded gun.

  Whoever had driven up here and walked across his lawn toward his home could have come and gone.

  Or a vehicle could have dropped someone off, left him behind.

  If someone was there, chances were he knew Rick was outside.

  Crouching as he put the truck in park, in case of a flying bullet, Rick kept the vehicle running and opened the door just enough to slide his foot down to the ground. With the door shielding his back, he pointed his gun through the truck to the house, and looked to the left, surveying the ground in that direction and then, through the side mirror, the area to the right.

  Slowly, moving in small bursts, hiding first behind steel and tire, and then trees, he made his way toward the house.

  He was one tree away when he heard something. Barely discernible. Maybe the rustling of a slight breeze in the bare twigs on trees that had shed their leaves weeks ago.

  Or someone moving.

  The side of the house was two feet away. With his back to the tree, his gun held at chest level and pointed straight out, Rick rounded the truck. Bringing the gun closer, he darted over to the house. He looked right. Left. And keeping his body against the house, he let his gun lead him to the door.