Close To You (Kari Blackhorse #12)

PROLOGUE

Cole had been watching the motel for three days.

It was the fourth location he’d surveilled since arriving in New Mexico, and the most promising.

A long, low building on a frontage road outside Albuquerque, the kind of place that took cash and didn’t ask for ID.

Twelve rooms, exterior doors, a parking lot visible from the Denny’s across the street where Cole had been eating the same breakfast every morning—two eggs over easy, wheat toast, black coffee—while he watched the comings and goings through the window.

Room nine. A woman had checked in eleven days ago, paid cash for a week, then paid again.

She drove a rental—a white Nissan Sentra from the Hertz at the Albuquerque airport—and she left the room twice a day: once in the morning to buy food from a grocery store two miles north, and once in the evening to walk a loop around the motel’s perimeter.

Both trips lasted less than thirty minutes.

The rest of the time, the curtains stayed drawn.

She matched the general description. Right age, right build, right hair.

The rental car was a smart choice—harder to trace than her personal vehicle, which was presumably still parked at what was left of her house on the Navajo reservation, full of bullet holes.

Cole had seen the photos. Whoever handled the first attempt had made a mess of it.

Sprayed the place with automatic fire like a drive-by, and the subject had not only survived, but returned fire and entered the house.

Amateurs with expensive equipment. Cole had worked with that type before and made a point of never working with them again.

He set down his coffee and opened the crossword book he kept in his jacket pocket.

Six letters, “habitual practice.” He filled in CUSTOM and moved to the next clue.

The crosswords were a habit he’d picked up years ago, in a different city, on a different job that had required long days of watching and waiting.

They kept his hands occupied and his eyes sharp.

A man staring out a window for hours attracted attention.

A man seemingly working a crossword puzzle while he ate breakfast was invisible.

The woman in room nine came out at 8:47. Same routine. Grocery bag from yesterday’s trip in the trash can by her door. She got in the Nissan and pulled north out of the lot.

Cole didn’t follow. He already knew where she was going and what route she’d take coming back.

What he needed now was confirmation that she was the right woman, and for that he needed a closer look—either at her face when she returned, or at whatever she’d left in the room.

He’d already mapped the motel’s security: one camera over the office entrance, nothing on the rooms. Maid service happened between ten and noon.

The locks were commercial-grade but not deadbolted from outside.

He had options. He was weighing them, turning the crossword book’s pen between his fingers, when the phone in his jacket buzzed.

Not the phone he used for personal calls, which was a prepaid he replaced every two weeks. The other one. Encrypted hardware running custom software that wiped call logs on disconnect. Only one number ever called it.

He left cash on the table and walked to his rental car before answering. A tan Camry, the most forgettable vehicle on any American road.

“Yes.”

“There’s been a change.” The voice was male, unhurried, the cadence of someone accustomed to giving instructions. Cole had never met the man and didn’t know his name. He’d spoken to him perhaps a dozen times over four years, always on this phone, always brief. “The Blackhorse job is on hold.”

Cole said nothing on hold meant on hold. It didn't require a response.

“We have a more pressing situation. A geologist named Nathan Whitmore. He’s been working for one of our survey teams in the Four Corners area and he’s become unreliable.” A pause. “The elimination needs to happen within the next seventy-two hours, and it needs to look like someone else did it.”

"Who?"

“A tribal police detective named Ben Tsosie. We’ll provide the materials—his service weapon, biological samples, a financial trail. Your job is the scene itself. It needs to hold up to a competent forensic examination.”

Cole processed this the way he processed every set of parameters: as logistics.

Weapon provided, DNA provided, financial cover provided.

His responsibility was the kill itself and the staging.

A framed murder was more complex than a clean one—more variables, more surfaces, more opportunities for error. It was also more expensive.

“Same rate as the Flagstaff job, plus twenty for the complexity.”

“Agreed. Details are being sent to your secondary channel now. The geologist’s home address, workplace, vehicle, daily routine. Our preference is that it happens away from populated areas.”

“I’ll need the materials forty-eight hours before.”

“They’ll be at the usual drop by tomorrow evening.”

The line went dead. Cole sat in the Camry with the engine off, the morning sun coming through the windshield, and let the previous three days of surveillance fall away.

Room nine, the woman’s routine, the lock assessment, the camera blind spots—all of it moved to a back shelf in his mind, still accessible but no longer active.

A file to be reopened if the hold was ever lifted.

He pulled up the secondary channel on a tablet he kept under the passenger seat.

A dossier was already loading. Nathan Whitmore, thirty-four, geologist, employed by a firm called Ridgeline Resources.

Photo showed a thin-faced man with a short beard, wire-rimmed glasses, the look of someone who spent more time outdoors than in an office.

Home address in Farmington. Girlfriend, no children.

Daily commute along a stretch of rural highway that ran through thirty miles of empty country.

Cole studied the route on a satellite map, identifying three potential sites within a ten-minute window of each other. Remote, minimal traffic, natural terrain that would complicate a canvas search. He’d need to scout each one in person before selecting.

The tribal detective’s information was there too.

Ben Tsosie, mid-thirties, Navajo Nation Police.

A service weapon—a Glock 19—had already been obtained.

There were notes on Tsosie’s recent movements, his home address, his known associates.

Cole didn’t read that section closely. He didn’t need to understand the tribal detective or whatever he’d done to end up as the frame.

That was someone else’s problem. Cole’s problem was making sure the physical evidence told a clean story: Tsosie’s gun, Tsosie’s DNA, a plausible sequence of events that would survive scrutiny long enough to serve whatever purpose his employers had in mind.

He closed the tablet and started the Camry. Farmington was three hours north. If he left now, he could scout the route before dark, find a motel, and start building the plan tomorrow morning.

He pulled out of the Denny’s lot and turned north on I-25, the crossword book on the passenger seat with the pen tucked inside, marking his place. Seven across was still blank. Nine letters, “without remorse.”

He’d finish it later.