Far Gone (12 page)

Scritch-scratch. Scritch-scratch.

It sounded like something small. She unlatched the door and cautiously opened it to poke her head out.

A truck roared down the highway, and an armadillo scampered out from behind her Jeep. It darted to the corner of the lot and disappeared into the field surrounding the motel.

Andrea stepped outside and stared after it. Another gust of wind had goose bumps springing up on her bare arms. She glanced up at the clear night sky.

Thousands of stars. Millions. She tipped her head back to look at them, and for the first time all day, the clutch of anxiety loosened. Maverick, Texas. During the day, it was dry and prickly. Same as its people. But tonight it seemed . . . peaceful. For a full minute, she simply gazed up at the glitter and let her thoughts drift away from the turmoil.

I like the free, fresh air.

She shuddered. And she thought of Jon North.

He was a solid investigator. And he believed he had a case against Hardin for robbery and murder and maybe even mass murder.

If he was right, then Gavin had to at least know
something
. The question was what. And what had happened to his moral compass? What had happened to the gentle little boy she’d grown up with?

Jon knew a lot, but he didn’t know Gavin. This was a kid who’d steadfastly avoided rough sports. Who loved target practice but refused to hunt. Who caught lizards in the house and carried them outside where they’d be safe from his grandmother’s broom.

Andrea looked glumly at the vacancy sign in the window of the motel office. She’d been here a total of seven days. A full week of her life, and what did she have to show for it? Many more questions than answers. A pair of nasty bruises. A brother who ignored her messages and had basically told her to get out of his life.

An inconvenient attraction to a man she knew was using her.

Why had she let him kiss her? Why had she shared so much about her past, her job, her
self
? Why had she let her guard down?

Because she felt a connection with him. Attraction, yes, but a connection, too. Even though she knew she shouldn’t.

Everything about her being out here was so screwed up. She should be home, saving her career from ruin, not stuck out in this dust bowl, investigating a case that wasn’t even hers.

She sighed and stared out at the highway. She remembered Nathan’s advice when she’d first joined homicide.

You don’t find something under one rock, turn over another.

Nathan knew what he was talking about. Andrea had never once solved a case by sitting around waiting for evidence to fall into her lap.

She went back inside and zipped her pistol into her purse. She threw on some jeans and shoved her feet into Nikes. She chucked her toiletries into her duffel, packed up her laptop, and glanced around the drafty little room.

She checked her watch: 11:50.

She hurried to the motel office, where someone was switching off lights and shutting down early. Through the window, she wasn’t surprised to see the listless teenager who’d checked her in. What was his name? She remembered chapped lips, pierced eyebrows, and an abundance of greasy hair that hung past his shoulders.

Andrea yanked open the door and leaned in.

“Just letting you know, I’m checking out.”

He looked at her with blank, dilated eyes.

“Room eleven. Jeep Cherokee.”

Another empty look. Then his gaze dropped to her tank top and seemed to focus.

“Any messages for me tonight? Or anyone stop by while I was gone?”

He dragged his attention to her face. “Oh, hey. So the room rate—that’s nonrefundable.”

“Yeah, got it. Did anyone swing by here tonight? Maybe a blue Ford Focus?”

He shook his head.

Andrea noticed the glowing vending machine across the room. She quickly pounded out two Cokes and a Snickers bar and gave the desk clerk a wave on the way out.

She piled into her SUV and stuffed the snacks into the cup holder. She popped open one of the Cokes and took a long gulp. Then she rolled down the windows and braced herself for a five-hour drive.

She felt better. Buoyed. Doing something felt infinitely better than
not
doing something. She was still pissed at Jon, but maybe she could harness all that anger and put it to use.

♦

The converted tack room smelled like leather and animal sweat, and Shay liked it. The smell put him in a mind to work.

Message Two was coming.

He finished with the metal file and sat back to admire his handiwork. Not bad. The device was simple yet elegant and reminded him of the Colt revolver his grandfather used to keep in the glove compartment of his truck. No automatic anything, nothing fancy. Just perfectly constructed parts that moved together for the desired effect.

Ross stepped up to the table and gazed down at the device. “Looks almost finished.”

Shay pulled off the latex gloves he wore in case agents from ATF or the Federal Bureau of Incineration managed to collect any debris. “I still have to hook up the timing mechanism.”

Ross folded his arms over his chest and pursed his lips. “I been thinking. Maybe we should skip this one. Kinda off-topic, if you think about it.”

Shay looked Ross up and down, disappointed. He would have expected something like this from the others. But he and Ross had been at Benning together. They’d been to Fallujah. He knew the tough decisions required in war.

Still, there had been warning signs. Ross had once been lean and fast, capable of humping a sixty-pound pack over dozens of miles, but eight years had taken a toll, and now he was soft and bloated, with a beer gut and a wife dragging him down. Maybe he’d lost sight of his creed. Maybe now he was just doing this for money. No mission commitment.

Shay didn’t need this shit now. He needed soldiers who weren’t afraid to engage the enemy.

“I didn’t define the rules of engagement,” Shay reminded him. “They were defined by the aggressor. Our government’s at war with its people.”

“Yeah, I know, I just . . . I think there’s gotta be a better way to make a point.”

Ross looked at him, oblivious to how pathetic he’d become. Pathetic or not, though, he was still a necessary element of the plan.

“Are you in or out? I can get someone else. Olivia will do it.”

Ross tipped his chin up, proving his ego was intact, at least. “I’m in.”

“Fine.”

Shay turned back to his work. The barn door creaked open, then whisked shut again. Shay was left with the cold silence of his task. He pulled his gloves back on. He’d finish now, while he felt inspired.

Message Two was coming, and it was brutally simple.

There are no innocents in war.

chapter ten

THE GUARD NOTED ANDREA’S
badge number on his clipboard before raising the electronic arm and waving her through. She wended her way up the driveway, not sure why she felt nervous. She’d been here many times before. This time it seemed different, though. She took a deep breath and tried to settle the butterflies in her stomach.

Through a line of oak trees, she glimpsed the tall white columns of the Delphi Center. The sight was imposing, but the gleaming building atop the hill was just the tip of the iceberg. Besides the upper floors, the Delphi Center included a multilevel basement that housed a firing range, the Bones Unit, and a complex warren of research labs.

Andrea hiked up the wide marble steps and produced her ID for the receptionist just as the person she’d come to see strode into the lobby.

“Hey, you’re back.” Alex Devereaux changed directions and came to meet her. In her hand was a paper bag from the on-site coffee shop.

“Got in this morning,” Andrea said.

“Nathan’s going to be surprised.”

Andrea was surprised, too. She’d fully intended to cancel another shrink appointment, but at the last minute, she’d decided to suck it up and go since she was in town. It had been every bit as miserable as the last one.

Nathan’s wife was watching her, her expression unreadable. Despite her petite stature and cute pixie cut, the brunette was known to be a ball buster. Before coming to the Delphi Center, she’d been a PI helping women in abusive relationships who wanted to disappear. Alex was highly skilled at both finding and losing people in cyberspace.

“Sorry to show up like this, but I have a request for you,” Andrea said.

“I thought you were on leave still.”

“It’s personal.”

As she said it, Andrea pinpointed the source of her nerves. All her other trips to Delphi had been work-related. She hated asking people for favors, especially personal ones.

Alex waited for her to collect a visitor’s badge and then led her to the elevator. “How was your trip to Marfa?” she asked as they zipped to the top floor.

“Maverick. Not great, which is why I’m here.”

The elevator doors slid open, and they were faced with a long wall of windows. Andrea stepped up to the glass and gazed out over the treetops. After days in the desert, everything looked so
green
. The view was beautiful except for the trio of turkey vultures circling above some low bushes. Besides being a world-renowned crime lab, the Delphi Center was also home to one of the nation’s largest decomposition research centers.

Alex led her past the DNA laboratory and ushered her into a dim room filled with glowing computer monitors, most piloted by scruffy twentysomethings. Action figures and bobblehead dolls perched on some of the cubicle dividers.

Alex took her to a corner cube.

“Then I’m guessing this is about your brother. How is he?”

“I’m not sure.” Andrea took a seat. “He recently dropped out of school to become a ranch hand.”

“Okay.”

“If you’d ever met my brother, you’d know how improbable that is.” She pictured him back at the Dairy Queen, with his pasty skin and his delicate fingers. “He’s working for some people I don’t trust, and I think they hired him for his technical skills, maybe setting up some sort of communications for them. But law enforcement’s got an eye on this group, and they say there’s not even any phone service out there.”

“Landlines or cell phones?”

“Neither. Cell coverage is spotty in the area anyway, but they haven’t come up with much, and they’ve been paying attention.”

“That kind of surveillance—you’re not talking some hayseed sheriff.”

“FBI.”

Her eyes widened. “Damn, Andrea.”

“I know.”

Alex didn’t say anything right away, and Andrea could tell she was now carefully choosing her questions. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need to know if they have it right. I can’t swallow it. I think the FBI’s missing something.”

Alex gave her a pensive look. “So surveillance. I’m not as current in that area as I used to be. I’ve been spending most of my time lately on SpiderNet—that’s our new software program that traces pedophiles who troll the Web for kids.”

“I see.” Andrea tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. It sounded like an excuse, and she didn’t want to strong-arm Nathan’s wife into helping her if she wasn’t comfortable.

Alex stood up and craned her neck over the cubes. “Hey, Ben.”

“Yo.”

“Can you pull up that activity map?” She looked at Andrea. “This is more Ben’s thing right now.”

They moved to a spacious double cubicle with no fewer than four monitors going. The man in the chair appeared about Gavin’s age, but he had a mature look in his eyes that said he’d seen a thing or two—maybe tracking down some of the trolls Alex mentioned.

He tipped back his chair and looked at Alex. “Wazzup?”

“Andrea, Ben.” She didn’t waste words. “Andrea’s with Austin PD. She’s looking at a subject who’s also being investigated by the feds. They’re coming up with two different profiles, and she thinks the FBI’s missing something.”

“You can count on it,” Ben said.

“You mind taking a look? She’s interested in Internet or phone activity at a certain location.”

“They’re saying there’s nothing there, but I don’t see how that can be true,” Andrea said.

“Well, if they’re just using Stingray, they’re probably missing something,” Ben said.

“Stingray?”

“It’s a cell-site simulator.”

At her blank look, he continued.

“A surveillance device. It secretly dupes phones within a certain area into jumping on a fake network. The feds don’t like to talk about it because it’s controversial for a lot of reasons, partly because it scoops up data about innocent people who aren’t even being investigated.”

“Do they need a warrant?” Andrea asked.

“That’s up for grabs,” Alex said. “The courts haven’t really caught up with a lot of the new surveillance techniques.”

“They’re probably using everything they have,” Ben said, “but there are plenty of ways around a system like this. What I’m working on is a program that picks up cell-phone
plus
Internet activity, without having to trick devices into using a fake network.”

“How does it work?” Andrea asked.

He sighed. “I could explain it all, but . . . why don’t I just show you what it does? Give me a zip code, and we’ll take it for a spin.” He closed out of what he’d been doing and clicked open a new program as Andrea rattled off the zip code of Lost Creek Ranch.

“Hmm . . . that’s a new one. Whoa.” His screen had turned white. He looked at her. “That’s another planet. Where exactly is this?” He zoomed out on a map until the screen showed Interstate 10 cutting through the outskirts of Fort Stockton. The edge of the city was covered with yellow and orange dots.

“What are those?” Andrea leaned in.

“Hot spots,” he said. “Internet or cell-phone activity. In the more populated areas”—he zoomed out until all of Fort Stockton appeared on the screen—“we break down the spectrum. Yellow, light activity. Purple, lots of usage. This town’s yellow-orange. This zip code here”—he zoomed back to the original area—“no hot spots. Practically a glacier.”

Andrea felt a ripple of relief. But she didn’t trust it. Her instincts told her something was up. She felt apprehensive as she looked at the screen. Did she really want the answers to these questions? Would she have the guts to act on the information if she got it?