Chapter Eight
RAVEN
I didn’t want to admit how scared I was. I was half afraid if I did, Miguel would grab the gun I knew he had tucked away in my glove compartment and go charging back up the stairs to shoot that guy. I had no idea who he was or how he was connected to Sutter, but at the moment, I didn’t want to stick around and find out. I was glad I’d found a place to park right outside McNulty’s office because my knees had turned to Jell-O by the time I got to the truck.
I walked around to the driver’s side door and fumbled with the door lock, completely forgetting to turn off the alarm until a deafening whoop whoop from the alarm split the relatively quiet sounds of the street. Miguel was at my side a moment later, covering my hand and pressing the button to shut it off as he started sliding the keys out of my shaking hand.
“Let me drive, Raven,” he said, hanging onto my hand as I looked up at him. The expression in his gorgeous brown eyes was frightening. I’d never seen him looking so angry, not even at the start of our relationship when I’d swooped in and stolen bounty on the Mulberry diamond case away from him.
“I can drive,” I said, feeling like a pussy as he stared at me.
His gaze softened. “You’re shaking like a leaf, Raven. Give me the keys and let’s get out of here.” He must have noticed the way I eyed up the building’s door because he squeezed my fingers. “He’s not there, Sunshine. Guys like him don’t hang around.”
I glanced around, half expecting him to be out on the street running away but it was absent of anything but normal auto and pedestrian traffic. I couldn’t spot him anywhere. I reluctantly let go of the key fob and nodded. He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat as I walked around and climbed in beside him. My hands were still shaking as I clicked my seatbelt into place, so I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart as he started the engine. As he pulled away from the curb, I watched the sidewalk in my rearview mirror, still trying to figure out where the shadowy man had gone since Miguel was so sure he had already disappeared.
“Do you have any idea who he was?” I asked, turning to look at Miguel whose jaw was clenched. A muscle ticked in his cheek, and I felt almost relieved to see it, hoping I would get to witness the wrath Miguel would wreak when we came across the mysterious man again.
“I have no idea, but I can tell you this, I’ve never seen him before. I have my suspicions now that he’s made himself known, but I’m going to keep those to myself for the moment.”
I felt anger race over my entire body, as I turned fully to look at him. “Why won’t you share your suspicions with me?”
“Because if I do, it could put you in even more danger, Raven. Guys like that man don’t leave witnesses behind to tell tales. That’s the code men like him live by. They do it for survival.”
“Men like him? Assassins?” I watched as he rolled his head on the headrest to look at me. The amusement in his eyes pissed me off, so I turned back to the road and reminded him that he had to make a U-turn since he was going the wrong direction.
“I know, Raven. I’m just—” He stopped talking, and I glanced over to watch him checking in the rearview mirror to see when it was safe to change lanes. I realized Miguel must have been as shaken up as I was.
“Miguel, tell me who he is! He called you Trigg, so he has to be someone from…I don’t know…your time in the service or something. We’re partners.” I was trembling all over again but this time it was the fury coursing through me. When he didn’t say anything, I crossed my arms over my chest and looked out the window. He made the U-turn and started heading back toward home in silence. It wasn’t even noon, and I knew he didn’t want to go into work just yet. There were things we could do there like checking out all the things McNulty had told us about the system, but the appearance of the dangerous stranger with the gun had killed my mood for work. I was certain it was having the same effect on him. He’d driven two miles before he finally let out a tortured sigh.
“I’m…not sure, maybe. I think he’s CIA and now…I’m beginning to think John was pulled into that bullshit also,” he said. He glanced at me, meeting my surprised expression with a nod of his head before looking back at the road.
“Why?”
“He was carrying a military issue SIG Sauer P320 firearm, for one thing. They’re issued to all Army and Marine personnel. Second, because of John’s disappearance. Nothing adds up other than that, Raven. Our Recon team went back out to the desert to look for him over and over. Marine Recon units aren’t just grunts who follow orders blindly. We’re given classified intelligence to complete our mission that other Marines don’t have access to. And even with that additional intelligence, we couldn’t find a trace of him. That never made any sense to us. The CIA can decide what intelligence a team, a commander, or even a base is given. In this case, I always felt like those fuckers were holding back, and I never understood why.
“I think they either found him and promised that if he went with them on one of their fucked-up missions, they’d get him back to join our unit at some point, or they lured him by some other means. Ever since John showed up, it’s been rolling around in my head, but I just didn’t trust that he wouldn’t try to get some sort of word back to us. If the enemy found him and made him into a terrorist willing to blow up Americans like you suggested—”
“I never suggested that,” I interrupted. “You turned my words into that, Miguel.”
He let out a frustrated growl. “Okay, sorry. What I’m saying is, if the enemy captured him, we would have found traces of it out there in the desert. We didn’t find evidence of a firefight. It’s one of the reasons our team was under suspicion for as long as we were. And, trust me, even if John’s mouth was choked with sand, he would have fought back. Sandstorm or not, we couldn’t even find an enemy bullet. Besides, I don’t know if you remember, but back then, every American soldier or Marine the terrorists captured were summarily executed…usually on camera. They used our deaths to mock our weaknesses, recruit more followers, or just plain, be cruel and evil. If they found a Recon Marine, they would have exploited the capture, tortured him, and more than likely streamed his execution for all the world to see.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me as he drove. “What did your team think happened to him then?”
He shrugged his big, broad shoulders. “We thought the storm had buried him in the desert.” He sighed. “None of us wanted to believe he’d been captured and even if he had—and by some miracle—the terrorists decided to keep him alive, we figured he would have been given back in a prisoner exchange at some point. They do that with high-value prisoners. We just held out hope that he wouldn’t be summarily executed, though, it would have made for great TV on Al Jazeera. But most of all, we hoped they wouldn’t figure out what kind of Marine they had. John had a wealth of intelligence about missions we were carrying out in those days.
“We all knew John was built to resist torture. Recon training is good. Maybe that was the reason the CIA grabbed him once they found out he was missing. It’s also possible that they found him first. It was a big base of operations. We had several CIA operatives on base. Who knows, Maybe those assholes launched their own mission to find him the second they realized he was lost. We were all too distracted with trying to find John ourselves.” He sighed again. “I guess we all just hoped he died choking on sand.”
“How awful.” I reached over and took his hand, holding onto it as he drove. “I can’t imagine what you went through.”
“We mourned him, Raven.”
I was silent but jumped when he suddenly pounded the steering wheel with a closed fist.
“What’s wrong?” I shivered as alarm flooded my veins.
“If he’s been with the CIA all this time, why didn’t he reach out?” His words sounded tortured as he turned to me. “We were his brothers, Raven, and we mourned him.”
I could hear the pain in his voice as he spoke. “Miguel…maybe he couldn’t. Maybe they’re holding something over his head. Those CIA guys sound like total assholes. You said so yourself. Maybe he had no choice.” He shot me an agonized glance before looking back at the road. I’d seen tears glistening in his eyes. It was terrible and I just wanted to shake this John Sutter asshole. I wanted to ask him why he’d put Miguel and all the others through hell. Miguel was right. Now, though, something else was on my mind. I hesitated but finally asked.
“ Um… Miguel…the phone he gave you…do you really think it’s booby-trapped? I can put it in the glove compartment,” I offered. I didn’t even want to touch the thing in case the man hadn’t been lying about it being some kind of a bomb.
Miguel’s lips turned up in the tiniest of smiles as he glanced over at me. “He was probably lying about that. Most burners aren’t encrypted but his theatrics added another piece to me thinking he was CIA. Why bother otherwise? But if it makes you feel any better, Raven, here you are.”
I watched him dig into his pocket and pull the phone out. I took it from him gingerly, half expecting that the stupid thing would blow up in my hand if I jostled it. It looked just like an average, old school 90s flip phone, one of those cheap ones my favorite spies like Jack Bauer from 24 used on the show. I wished I had Bubble Wrap to wrap it up but then I mentally chastised myself for being an idiot, as if popping plastic could protect us from an exploding phone.
After locking it away in the glove box, I got quiet, letting him drive. I could almost hear the gears turning in his brain. He was working something out but whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it yet. He sat broodily beside me but after a few minutes, he turned and looked at me.
“Where does your friend, McCallahan live?”
“I—I don’t know,” I stuttered.
Miguel glanced over. “He’s ATF now, but when we were caught up in that job to catch Howell Jr. a few months back, he mentioned he had an affiliation with the CIA. If he still has contacts over there, I need to talk to him.”
I slowly nodded, pursing my lips. It was a good idea. I trusted Mac the same way I trusted Jarrett and Thayne. They were all good men and if it was humanly possible, I knew Mac would help Miguel find the answers he needed. I checked the clock on the dashboard.
“Okay, well…it’s the middle of the day which means he’s probably still at the ATF office. I think it’s out in Glendale.” I pulled out my phone. “Let me see if I have his number.” I started scrolling. I didn’t have McCallahan listed in my contacts, but I had Thayne and Jarrett’s number. I hit the button, calling them.
“Hello?”
“Hi… ah …Thayne?”
“Mathis?” the voice drawled.
“Oh, this must be Jarrett. It’s Raven Mathis.”
He chuckled. “I just said that,” Jarrett replied, sounding relaxed and…smiling? “What can I do for ya? Thayne’s in the restroom, but I’ll tell him you called.”
“No… ah …sorry, Jarrett. I-I wanted to see if you have Mac’s number.” I glanced at Miguel who was driving, but I sensed that he was listening to my stuttering intently.
“I’ve got his number but he’s standin’ right next to me. You wanna talk to him?”
My heartrate sped up. “Yes, please…thank you, Jarrett.”
“No problem, kid.”
Kid . I hmphed as he passed the phone to Mac.
“This is Mac McCallahan,” the voice said.
“Hey, Mac…this is Raven Mathis.”
“Raven? How are you? How’s Miguel?”
“We’re good.” I shot Miguel another look, just as he glanced over. “Hey, listen, the reason I called is because we’d like to come and talk to you for a second if that’d be okay.”
“ Uh, sure, but I’m not in the office right now, Raven. We’re down at the Federal building in Westwood.”
I reached out, waving to Miguel to make a U-turn to head back the way we’d come. He immediately began to change lanes. “If it’s no trouble, we’d like just a minute of your time, Mac. I know you’re working but—”
“It’s fine, Raven. The ATF had some business with the FBI, but if you’re already in the neighborhood, please, come by now. We can meet you in the lobby, so just call me when you get here and we’ll come down.”
“Thanks, Mac,” I said, letting out a long, slow breath. “I really appreciate it. It’ll take about ten minutes to get to you.”
“No problem. We’ll be here a bit longer, but I’m looking forward to seeing you. It’s been too long.”
“Thanks, Mac. Thanks so much.” I hung up the phone, relieved as I glanced at Miguel. “Head to the Federal building. The ATF had to do something with him at the FBI, but he has time for some questions.”
Miguel nodded and he reached over, taking my hand as I dropped my phone in a slot in the center console. “I’m gonna confess something here, Raven.”
My heart skipped a beat, but I squeezed his hand encouraging him to tell me whatever was bugging him. “What?”
“If I find out that John’s been working with the CIA this whole time, I don’t know how I’m gonna take that.”
I frowned, looking over at him. His face was set in a grim line as he drove. “What do you mean?”
“If he’s been alive this whole time and hasn’t reached out to any of us because he’s been out of the country somewhere that it would be dangerous to reach out, I might eventually be okay with it.”
I could see him grinding his teeth as he went on.
“But if it turns out that he had options to come back and chose them over men he called brothers, I’m not going to be able to forgive him.”
“There’s the other option, you know. He might have been held prisoner until now. I know the government sometimes does prisoner exchanges,” I said hopefully. “He might just now be coming home, and if that’s the case…you really should try to find a way to forgive him.” I didn’t want him to suffer with the guilt of not seeking closure in Sutter’s disappearance. I could tell the whole situation was eating him up inside.
He glanced over at me, shaking his head. “He got lost when he was barely twenty-seven years old, Raven. If he was held prisoner by the enemy for over eleven years, he’s going to be too far gone, and I know I’ll never trust him again. Honestly, I don’t know if I can trust him under any circumstances. He hasn’t even reached out to me personally. That man we saw today…that’s the kind of man John could be…heartless…maybe even worse.”
I hesitated because Miguel was right. If enemy combatants had kept Sutter prisoner, tortured him for information, he might have built up such rage over the years, that he’d lost any trace of the man he’d once been. He might have lost any measure of kindness just to survive.
“Have you asked the other men in your unit? Did you call Vonne after you saw Sutter yesterday?”
“Definitely not. I don’t want to do that yet. Let’s get more information first. I want to find out what happened to him…if he’s been working with those CIA fuckers before I call Vonne or any of the others. Two of the men on my team are still active duty…out of the country on missions, and the other one doesn’t live in L.A.” He paused for just a second, seeming to think something over. When he finally did speak, he sounded very sad. “And to be honest, Raven, I know my reaction to this whole situation was bad…but Vonne’s reaction is gonna be worse.”
“How do you mean?”
He sighed. “About two weeks before the mission where we lost him in the desert, John was injured in a firefight with some…bad folks, and he got hurt. He was limping pretty badly from a bullet wound to the thigh, and Vonne thought he shouldn’t be with us at all out there. Vonne was our medic and trained to spot physical weaknesses.”
“You mean Sutter wasn’t fit for duty?” I asked.
Miguel lifted the palm of his hand and wiggled it back and forth. “He was so-so, not so bad that he couldn’t hide it when we went into the commander’s tent to talk to him, but bad enough that he kept us up at night when he was in pain. I’m pretty sure he asked the base physician who treated his wound to downplay his injury because he didn’t want to be excluded from duty until he was fully healed. John could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.”
“Let me guess. You guys let him get away with that because you didn’t want to tell the base commander he was as bad as he was?”
“Most of us, yeah, that’s the long and the short of it. None of us wanted a little injury to give him a reason to break up the team. But the fact is, Vonne kept telling him he had to bow out of any missions until he healed up completely…that every time he put weight on it, he was in danger of injuring it worse. It was a through and through similar to the one you got when you were shot. But when it got so bad one night that John couldn’t sleep at all, I had to physically hold Vonne back from going to the commander to tell him how injured John really was. We nearly came to blows.”
My eyes widened. “You and Vonne?”
“Yeah. We’d already been told that we were going out the next morning on the mission where John disappeared. Vonne thought he wasn’t healthy enough to risk leading the team and since John was insisting on going anyway, he started yelling that he had to be touched in the head also. We got into a horrible fight and finally, John ordered him not to go to the commander. When Vonne tried to go anyway, I was forced to make a choice. I held him back and almost fought with him myself. After John, Vonne was the man I was closest to in our unit, and I was…completely heartbroken.”
“You did what you thought was right, Miguel. Having to make a choice between your two best friends was a terrible situation.”
He let out a long huff of air. “Maybe,” he said quietly. “And I almost lost my friendship with Vonne. So, you can imagine when we did lose John in that freak sandstorm, both Vonne and I dealt with years of guilt and anger. We both knew he wasn’t fully able to act as team leader, and in the end, we let him go anyway. Hell, maybe the reason I’m so angry at John right now is because he made me feel that way all those years ago. That night, he was the one who nearly broke up our team. Vonne loved him like a brother and to lose him that way sent him into a downward spiral for years.”
“He felt like he failed him by not going to the commander,” I concluded.
Miguel nodded. “We made a huge mistake and when he died out there in the desert… all of us felt responsible.”
I hated that Sutter had failed his team so profoundly. When I finally came face to face with the guy, I was probably going to punch him in the face. I squeezed Miguel’s hand. “You weren’t, you know.” When he turned to look at me, I nodded. “Sutter was responsible for what happened out there. Not you. Not Vonne. Not the rest of the team.” I knew I sounded like a shrink, but I think Miguel talking about what happened was a good thing. It had clearly fucked the whole team up.
He turned back to the road. “I eventually came to terms with it and Vonne and I made up, but still, it was hard on us.” It was as if he’d read my mind.
“Vonne admires you. Maybe he admires you for stepping into John’s shoes and taking care of the team after John’s disappearance.”
He nodded. “Maybe, Raven. I don’t know.” He was quiet for a moment and then he smiled. “I wish you’d known John in good times. You would have liked him.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. I hated the man for what he was doing to Miguel. When I didn’t respond, he looked over.
“What do you think that guy meant when he said the ruby didn’t belong to Flores?”
I’d been wondering the same thing. I shrugged my shoulders. “Mrs. Flores said the ruby had been in her husband’s family for generations, so I have no idea. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find out tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.”