Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Nelly
Carl is not pleased.
When I tore off my wire, either Jake or I must have stepped on it and broken it in the tunnel.
So, I faked an emergency to get escorted off the compound after my shift at the women’s detention center. Then I ditched the cult’s chaperone once we arrived at the hospital and called Carl to pick me up.
“I can’t decide if you’re too cocky or you’re trying to get killed, Carter,” Carl grumbles from the driver’s seat.
My training aside, it was too easy to convince that chaperone not to follow me into the emergency room.
“All I had to do was mention irregularly heavy bleeding and pretend to have blinding period cramps,” I tell him.
Once inside, I called Carl to pick me up.
From there, I put on my disguise and attached myself to a family group as they exited the emergency room. “I thought you’d be impressed.”
He mutters as he pulls up to the only stoplight in this one-horse town. We’re stopped behind a beat-up pickup truck that’s sitting there with the driver’s side door open. My god, I’m not going to miss this place when I’m done with this assignment. The way people behave on the roads is wild.
“You could have just called me and I’d’ve figured out how to get a new wire to you. This is reckless.”
“But I needed to talk to you,” I say. “I have information.”
“Yeah?”
“You know that ranch down the road from the compound?”
Carl lifts an eyebrow and looks at me sideways. “I’m familiar.”
“Well, those guys are building a network of tunnels to get people out.”
He turns to me. “I heard some of that before you, uh, lost your recording device.”
“Right. Well, I think we need to bring those guys into the investigation. They can help us.”
“No,” he says right away.
“We need informants!”
“That’s not how it works, agent. You work your sources from within. You don’t put bystanders in danger.”
“He’s not a bystander. He’s actively working against C.O.C.K.”
“Vigilantes are too unpredictable.”
I should have known he’d react this way. He didn’t become as prestigious as he is by going off-book.
As Carl gets ready to go around the idling truck, I grab his arm as I spot a particular storefront.
“Coffee!”
“Agent. Someone’s gonna recognize you,” Carl says.
“Not in this outfit. I’ll just be a second.”
Where in the hell is the driver of that beat-up old truck?
My eyes scan the road, the storefronts. In the quaint town square with the picturesque creek running through it, I finally see who I suspect to be the person who abandoned the truck in front of us.
A lean, rugged man with cowboy boots, dirty jeans, and a bulky plaid shirt is there.
My heart gallops.
Oh god. It’s him.
I have to get out of here before he sees me.
Stupidly, I sit and stare for a minute through the passenger window.
And then I notice Carl is staring, too. “What are these idiots doing?” Carl asks no one in particular. It’s not said in a road-rage sort of way. More like “I know these idiots” kind of way. Almost paternal, if I didn’t know any better.
If Carl knew I had that man’s number in my phone…
He simply typed in “Jake,” without a last name.
Of course, I’d get my panties twisted over a cowboy named Jake. He’s reading something at the kiosk. Another man is with him. That one glances around, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Listen,” I say to Carl, “it’s time for morning chapel at the compound. Nobody’s in town to spot me. Second of all, it’s just coffee. The polygamists don’t drink coffee. That chaperone is still waiting in the hospital parking lot. I know because I put a tracker on his car.”
“Make it fast,” Carl grumbles.
With a wink, I put on my oversized sunglasses for extra security, and with the added hope that Jake won’t recognize me.
The annoyed Carl shakes his head and lays on the horn impatiently.
“I open the door just in time to hear the first cowboy shout something at Carl. Yikes.
I scoot into Nate’s and ask for four shots of espresso in my ginormous drink.
I have a feeling I’m gonna need the extra pep in my step today.