Chapter 11
ELEVEN
San Diego
“Any more news?” Harry asked quietly.
Mike flipped his cellphone closed and shook his head.
He’d been San Diego SWAT for a couple of years and though he was now a partner at RBK Security, he still had lots of buddies in law enforcement, men he’d trained with in SWAT training courses.
He’d called the friend of his at Seattle PD they’d called earlier to check out the whereabouts of Roddy Fisher.
Before the cops even made it to Fisher’s house, his dead body had showed up.
“No. The news agencies got it all. Except for the fact that apparently, the guy’d been buried and dug up.”
“Wh-what?” Ellen looked up at Mike. Her face had lost all color. Even her lips were white. She was shivering uncontrollably though the day was warm. Harry had put a blanket on her shoulders but it didn’t seem to help.
“Besides the—the signs on Fisher’s body—" Mike took one look at Ellen and censored what he’d been about to say.
The signs of torture. “Besides those, they found some clumps of dirt on his body. Not much. Forensics say the clumps of dirt are consistent with the chemical makeup of the mountains surrounding Seattle, one in particular. Cougar Mountain.”
“That’s not much help,” Harry said sourly. “Only narrows the area to about a hundred square miles. Maybe more.”
“Yeah.” Mike checked a pad where he’d taken notes.
“This isn’t for public consumption yet, but the way they’re figuring it, the guy was buried then disinterred.
By the state of decomposition of the body, they’re figuring he was killed seven days ago, maybe more.
That’s about all they’ve got. No leads, no clues.
We might suspect who did it, but so far there’s no evidence linking anyone, let alone Gerald Montez, to the murder.
” He closed his note pad. “But I’m going to send my pal an email telling him to look into Gerald Montez’s whereabouts, and why. ”
Ellen looked up, her face miserable. “Local law enforcement around Prineville is in Gerald’s pocket.
He cultivates officers. Offers them free shooting time, gives generously to police charities, hires some guys from the police department from time to time.
He pays them very well. I don’t think you’ll get any help from them.
Gerald could be standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in his hand and they’d look the other way. ”
“Well, you can be sure Seattle PD isn’t in Montez’s pocket,” Mike said grimly.
“And my guy there is a good guy. No one’s going to buy him off.
Ex Marine.” He said it as if it cinched his argument.
Mike was incredibly proud of having been a Marine and he kept in contact with former Marines all over the country.
Marines were good guys. Semper fraternis.
The second half of the motto. Always brothers
Harry was former Delta. Delta operators were sneaky and calculating. It was the nature of their job, a lot of which was undercover. It wasn’t impossible to imagine a former operator sliding over to the dark side. Not a Marine, though.
Ellen looked like she was having trouble taking it all in.
He sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, feeling the deep shudders going through her. She leaned into him gratefully, huddling against him as if for warmth.
His natural impulse was to pace the floor, a way of shaking the rage that pulsed through him. But Ellen needed his warmth and strength so he had to tuck the rage away and concentrate on her.
And, of course, the fucker after her. The one who’d massacred her agent.
It was all over the news now. Partly because Roddy Fisher was a really big name on the Seattle music scene and partly because of the way he’d died. Tortured, shot in the head, then his long-dead naked body handcuffed to a railing in Kerry Park.
The park’s security cameras had been blanked at a quarter to four in the morning when the body had been displayed. At 3:45 the cameras had blanked, at 4:20 am Fisher’s body had appeared.
It was really hard for Harry to even think with Ellen so terrified and distraught next to him. It had taken the three men and Nicole half an hour to convince her that she wasn’t responsible for Fisher’s death.
That would be the fucker Montez.
“Here, sweetie, drink up.” Nicole placed a cup of tea in Ellen’s hand. It shook as it emerged from the blanket. Harry cupped his hand around hers so she wouldn’t spill boiling tea all over herself and he nearly winced at how icy cold her hand felt. She was in shock.
He’d told Nicole to put a ton of honey and a finger of whiskey in the tea and she’d nodded.
“Go ahead, honey. Drink,” he said quietly, lifting his hand toward her mouth. She shuddered again and sipped.
“Thanks, Nicole.” Ellen looked up, tried to smile for Sam’s wife and Harry’s heart nearly broke. Her world had been shattered once again. Sam and Mike were standing, tense and angry, spoiling for a fight.
Harry was really really glad they were on his side because right now he was a wreck. He’d lost all his analytical powers and was tuned exclusively to the shivering, lost, beautiful woman by his side.
“I’m so sorry, Nicole.” Ellen whispered for the hundredth time. She looked at Harry, Sam and Mike. “I’m so sorry to have involved you in all of this. I need to go, to—“
“Bullshit!” Harry exploded. He felt like his head was going to blow apart.
“Dude, can it.” Mike’s deep bass was steady. “You’re not helping.” He crouched down in front of Ellen and took her free hand, enclosing it his two huge hands.
“This is not your fault. None of this is even remotely your fault, Ellen. Montez is a bad guy and he has to be stopped. We’ll do it because that’s what we do. You don’t worry about us.”
Ellen swallowed convulsively, her long white throat working. Her mouth was trembling, tears at the corner of her eyes. “What if something happens to you? To Harry or Sam or you or…or Nicole? Because of me? I couldn’t stand it. I’d rather be dead. This is my fight, I can’t drag you guys into it.”
“We’re already in.” Sam said grimly. “No turning back. So you need to go over everything again for us. Tell us everything you know. The more intel we have the better we can find this fu—asshole and take care of him.”
Ellen breathed shakily, in and out. Harry held her even more tightly against him. Another shudder ran through her.
She’d been on the run for a year. She’d been shot. They should get off her case. “It’s okay, honey,” he said gently. “Maybe some other time—“
“No!” Ellen threw her head back, eyes closed, clearly gathering her strength.
When her eyes opened again, the shivering was gone.
Hands and gaze steady. She stayed like that for a minute, two.
Harry could actually see her resolve shaping.
“I can do this. If you guys are taking him on, you need all the ammunition I can give you. I can’t let you down. ”
Harry saw Mike and Sam exchange glances. Good girl. The words were in the room, though they didn’t say them aloud. At that moment, Harry admired Ellen more than anyone he knew.
He and Sam and Mike had made sure that they were well equipped to deal with the monsters in the world.
They were all super proficient with weapons of every shape and size and Mike—well.
Mike was probably one of the best sharpshooters in the world.
They were all big, strong men, trained in martial arts.
They’d all been in firefights and had prevailed.
They had all the tools in hand to track down and destroy someone like Montez.
But Ellen…shit, Ellen had nothing in her to fight him with. She was alive because she was smart and thought fast on her feet and because luck had been on her side. She was brave, but bravery without skills to back it up was really just another way to get yourself killed.
Ellen was beautiful, incredibly talented, and kind-hearted. In another, better world, that would make her respected and admired. In this world, where men like Gerald Montez ruled, that made her road kill.
Harry’d lost Crissy. He hadn’t been able to protect his baby sister, no matter how hard he’d tried. The sweetest little girl in the world and an ogre had snuffed her out like a candle.
This stopped, right here, right now.
Ellen was not going to fall in Montez’s hands. Not now, not ever.
And he, Harry, was going to have to pull his head out of his ass, PDQ, because his blind fear for her wasn’t any use to her at all. She needed him razor sharp and cool, not this trembling wreck of a man, terrified of losing her just as he’d lost his sister.
“Start at the beginning, honey.” Everyone’s head turned to him, which meant he’d been sounding like a lunatic before.
Harry nodded his head—don’t worry, I’m back—and Sam and Mike dipped their heads slightly—glad to hear it.
“From when you ran. The reason you ran. You said you’d been working for Bearclaw for a couple of years, right? ”
“Yes. Over two years.” She was sitting upright, voice clear and steady, hands clenched tightly in her lap.
“I kept coming up against inconsistencies, things that skirted fraudulent accounting. He thought I wouldn’t notice anything.
He hired a CPA because the law required it, that was all, but he was fiddling the books.
That was clear to me by the first week on the job. ”
Man, did you hire the wrong woman, Harry thought.