Bear Bait (9781101611548) (35 page)

Chase shook his head. “Ernest Craig had no idea what his daughter was up to.”

“That poor man.” Sam’s head was spinning. The cows, lured by their quiet conversation, had moved closer now. She could hear one chewing its cud near the right rear fender. “You said Frazier was the key?”

“Frieda Frazier was an Internet friend of Allie’s. Head of a group called Justice for Veterans. Its mission is to put pressure on the government to take care of veterans’ health and unemployment problems.”

Ernest Craig’s limp immediately came to mind. “That sounds worthwhile,” Sam said. Maybe Lisa—Allyson—wasn’t quite the terrorist Chase was making her out to be.

“Except that the group’s idea of pressure isn’t merely political. Frazier was also a leader in the Patriot Order, and it looks like she and Allie were hatching a scheme to blow up the VA building in Seattle.”

Sam twisted to study Chase, and the closest cow shied back with a snort. “
This
is what you’ve been working on? I thought you and Nicole were assigned to those robberies.”

He popped open the glove compartment and yanked out a piece of paper, turned on the light on the bottom of the rearview mirror. “We matched the fingerprints of one of our armed robbers to a security guard at a warehouse in Carbonado, Wyoming. We found this in a recycle bin there.”

Judging by the faint lines that ran vertically down the photocopy, the original had been shredded and then pasted together again. It was a table of letters and numbers, labeled
EMINENTEN GRANTS
at the top.

“Grants?” she asked. “Is this some sort of scholarship list?”

He chuckled. “I guess you could say that. The money from the robberies is meant for the payouts.”

“Payouts? What for?”

“You’ll see.”

The columns on the page were headed by the letters
B
,
T
, and
O
. The squares under
B
were filled with numbers; those under
T
and
O
contained letters.

B? T? O?
Only the letters in the
O
column looked remotely familiar—IRS, SSA, NOAA, USFWS…“What is this?” she asked. “A list of government organizations?”

“Check out the row with NPS in the last column.”

She read the row backward. A heifer crowded her side of the car again; the animal’s breath was hot on the back of her neck. It felt as if the cow were reading over her shoulder. “
O
—NPS.
T
—SW.” She looked up at him. “
O
, Organization. What does
T
stand for?”

“We think it stands for ‘Target.’”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. He answered her unasked question. “And we believe SW stands for Summer Westin.”

“
BUT
I’m
not
part of the National Park Service. I was just a temp. Again.” The heifer at her elbow blew a puff of warm air as if to emphasize the point.

“Apparently they don’t know that.”

The locusts, receiving some silent, invisible signal, began to hum again from the nearby stand of cottonwoods. “What happened to blowing up the VA building?”

“That was Allyson’s plan. Guess the plan changed after she died.”

It’s not yet time
. Her stomach did an odd little flip-flop.

“These are huge organizations. It took a long time to link these initials with dates and come up with names of individuals.” Chase pointed at the letters next to IRS. “RO is Robert Orso. After thirty-five years of service, the IRS office in San Diego is giving him a retirement party on August twenty-eighth.” His index finger moved down a couple of squares. “Natalie Seger is the public affairs officer for the U.S. Marshals service in Atlanta. She’s hosting a medal ceremony on August twenty-eighth. Ralph Guze is a customs inspector. As far as we know, he’ll be at work on Friday, on the docks in Baltimore.”

She stared at him in horror. “The number we found on the tree—eight-one-two-eight? It’s not eight-one, is it? It’s eight-slash, as in forward slash, as in August twenty-eight. Eminent-ten,” she gasped. “How cleverly obscure. An eminent man could also be called an august man, although that usage is pretty archaic; ten is two plus eight. August twenty-eight.”

“Too bad you weren’t on our team earlier,” he said. “It took Nicole and me a long time to figure that one out.”

August 28 was the opening day of the conference. The date of her speech. The date that had been grouped with the number 14 and the anniversary of Waco and Oklahoma City. The locusts seemed to reverberate inside of her skull instead of singing from the trees. “There must be close to a hundred people on this list.”

“Exactly one hundred. There were references to a hundred points of light in some e-mails.
B
probably stands for branch; we’ve been calling them cells. This appears to be a coordinated event, scheduled to happen on the same day all over the country.”

Unbelievable. She was holding a domestic terrorist hit list. And her initials were on it. She slid the sheet of paper onto the dashboard and wiped her sweaty palms on the front of her dress. Thank God the FBI had figured it out before it happened. “But now you know, so you can stop it. You have your robbers, right?”

“Not yet.” He took her hand and looked deep into her eyes. It might have been a romantic gesture except for the grim set of his mouth. “We know who they are, and now we know what they’re funding. It looks like each branch that pulls off a hit will get fifty thousand dollars. We’ve identified most of the intended victims on this list.”

Most?
She swallowed hard.

“We’ve got agents all over the country working on this. We’ll know all the targets by the twenty-eighth.”

“Good,” she said. “You’ll have everyone rounded up before then.”

“Here’s the hard part.” His grip tightened on her fingers. “We’ll know the targets—and they will have protection—but we don’t know all the perps. We’re not arresting anyone until the twenty-eighth.”

She turned to him, incredulous.

“This is our big chance, Summer. We’ve never had an opportunity like this to expose a nationwide terrorist network in one sweep.” His eyes gleamed with excitement.
“We can’t afford to alarm anyone. We need to catch them in the act so we can put them all away for good. Otherwise a bunch of them will get only a slap on the hand for weapons charges and they’ll go underground again.”

Her lips were dry, and she had to lick them before she could speak. “So all of us—targets—we have to do whatever we’re scheduled to do on August twenty-eighth.” She had a sudden ridiculous thought of forming a support group for terrorist targets. It would be nice to meet Robert and Natalie and Ralph. Before the twenty-eighth. Just in case.

“That’s why you won’t be at the conference. We’re searching for a lookalike stand-in now.”

“To give my speech?” She thought about it. “That won’t work. Where are you going to find a gorgeous five-foot-two blond, buff woman like me?” She held up her arms and flexed her biceps.

“Summer…” He shook his head. “I can’t…”

“They know me. You have no choice. They
picked
me.” She smiled stiffly. “I feel so special. I bet the others do, too.”

He didn’t smile back. “We’re pretty sure that we know who is after you, Summer—at least, we know two of them: Jack Winner and Philip King.”

How long had they been watching her? Had they been the shooters at Marmot Lake? “I have to do it,” she said. “The odds are they know me on sight. You’ll keep me safe. Right?”

He nodded, his face grim now. “We’ll do our best. But I’m still looking for that stand-in.”

“No. If I don’t show up, they might choose another target.”

He didn’t disagree.

“Why did they pick me? Just because I gave Winner’s truck license to the rangers?”

Two cows stood near the passenger door now, chewing their endless green gum, waiting to see what the denouement of this drama might be. Another stood not far away from Chase’s door. Several had quietly moved in front of the car, down to the water’s edge.

“You’ve been on television in NPS uniform, you’re going to stand up in front of a big government audience and talk
about endangered species, another sore point with the antigovernment crowd. This whole project is designed to make a statement—I don’t think there’s anything personal involved.”

“Well, that makes me feel a lot better.” She frowned. “Philip King—Joe told me that he has a record of violence.”

Chase nodded. “We found his fingerprint on Caitlin Knight’s belt buckle.”

A chill prickled across the back of her neck. King’s print on the murdered game warden’s belt buckle most likely meant that he’d raped her before he shot her. Or after. Sam struggled unsuccessfully to wipe the awful image from her imagination. “So you have enough evidence to put him away?”
Please tell me he’s already behind bars.

He nodded again. “We have the evidence but we don’t want to grab him yet. That might cancel their big plans.”

Their big plans to kill her.
The new knowledge that the FBI let known murderers wander around free gave her chills. Sam listened to the cows slurping water and stared beyond them at the shimmering lake, wondering what else her government was pretending ignorance of.

Chase raised an eyebrow and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, calling her attention to the cows that crowded his door.

“Ignore them,” she told him. “They’re just being cows.”

“Weird.” He twisted in his seat to stare back at them. With a flurry of hoof clops, they backed up.

She thought about the unkind stares she’d received in Forks. “How many people in Washington State belong to this Patriot Order?” she asked.

Lili’s “club” must have some sort of link to it, but it couldn’t be too overt or Lili would never have fallen for it. Were the other government employees safe? She couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to Joe. Or Mack. Jodi. Peter Hoyle. Even Arnie Cole. “Why didn’t you and Joe tell me?”

“We didn’t piece it all together until two days ago. And like I said, we want them to think they’re getting away with it.”

What else hadn’t he told her? “So how are they planning
to get me?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word
kill
. “The C-4?”

He winced. “Maybe, but that was Allyson’s plan, so it might be something else. We’re still working on that.”

We’re still working on that?
The words didn’t exactly inspire confidence. And sure, the FBI knew Winner and King, but how many others were out there? The Bureau had figured out the Oklahoma City bombing only after the fact. Then there was 9/11. She swallowed hard. How had her throat become so dry? She believed that Chase would do his utmost to keep her safe, but her trust in the efficiency of government organizations was near zero.

Two heifers still stood beside her door, their liquid eyes fixed on her and Chase. They belched fermented grass, their constant chewing interrupted only by an occasional tail swish. Sam Westin, an underemployed nature writer, the target of a group of antigovernment terrorists? It seemed too far-fetched to be true. She was pretty sure that was the cows’ opinion, too.

“I’ll be there,
mi corazón
. And there’ll be others. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

He’d given in pretty quickly to her demand to speak at the conference. They both knew it was the only strategy that made sense. She pulled one of her hands free from his and put it on his cheek. “Can you make them like my speech?”

“Want us to wave our guns and demand applause?”

“I’ll let you know.” She sighed. “And now, I suppose, we have to go back and pretend that none of this is happening.”

“Right.” Putting his hand on the car key, he gazed at the herd surrounding the car, and then gave her a questioning look.

She rolled her eyes. “Move it!” she yelled, banging the side of the car with her open palm. The cattle snorted, wheeled around, and disappeared into the darkness. She wanted to disappear with them.

THE
church was almost exactly as she remembered it. The same oak pews, polished to a smooth gloss by decades of skirts and pants. The same three stained glass windows up front, depicting the wise men visiting Jesus in the manger, Jesus healing the sick, and her favorite, Jesus surrounded by children and animals. She’d spent hours staring at that one, wishing she could get animals to come to her by raising her hand that way.

She was glad to have Chase’s hand to hold, to feel his strength sitting beside her. The flooring, she realized as she studied its pattern beneath her taupe pumps, had been replaced since her last visit. And she couldn’t recall the pulpit behind which her father now stood. It was a lovely honey-hued oak with a cross on the front and carved tendrils of leaves and grapes twining up the sides, and the book rest at just the right height for him.

Her father looked confident and handsome this morning, his silver hair still bearing the marks of his comb, his tanned face beaming at the crowd. His congregation. The organ music died down and the crowd hushed, expectant.

“Today,” he said, “we’re going to have a wedding. My wedding. I’m so happy to have you all here to celebrate with Zola and me, and I’m thrilled that my good friend, Reverend Martin Heath from First Methodist in Clear Lake, will officiate.” He nodded toward a suited man in the front row.

“But first, my thoughts for the day, otherwise known as the sermon. Today’s will be short.” He looked down at his
notes on the pulpit, waited for a beat, and then asked, “Why did God give Man dominion over the Earth?”

Oh no.
Chase glanced her way. Had the words actually come out of her mouth? She leaned toward him and whispered, “If smoke pours out of my ears, please drag me outside before my head explodes.”

He nodded solemnly, but she could see a glint of amusement in his dark eyes.

“Today’s scripture reading is from the book of Genesis,” her father said. “‘So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.’”