Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MIDNIGHT
“ I hate this,” Maria whispered. She was face down on the hard, dry ground lying under a desert camouflage net. Bubba was beside her, and they were under orders to stay put and not get shot. They were both armed, but only for self-defense, as they’d been reminded a dozen times.
Willow and rest of the deputies were at strategic locations around the area. Uncle Garrett and Maria’s dad were directing things. Agent Hofstadler, Detective Wynn, and other officers were a part of the mix. The brown boulder known as Lone Wolf Rock was shaped like an upright, howling canine in an otherwise flat, brown landscape. Tufts of scrub brush dotted the area like the scattered toys of a giant’s child.
Harry stood out there. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest underneath his shirt, and it made him look twenty pounds heavier. He was wearing the hat she’d got him. She found it sexy as hell on him, because it was such a contrast, a cowboy hat on the head of a scientist. It emphasized his uniqueness. Maybe that was why she loved him.
She’d pretty much made peace with the fact that she loved him. It wasn’t as if she could do anything to change it.
She looked around the area and then at her phone. “It’s two minutes after midnight,” she whispered.
“I know.” Bubba’s tone was as deep and low as an elephant’s subsonic rumble.
“He was s’posed to be here at midnight.”
“I know.”
“He can’t bring Lily to trade, like he said he would. We know that.”
“Yep.”
“He plans to kill him.”
“Shhhhhhhhh.”
The way he shushed made her think something was happening, and she shifted her focus from Harry to the area around him. The only places for a shooter to hide would be those patches of sage brush.
Wait, was something out there moving? There was a shadow in motion behind a patch of brush! Maria exploded out from under her tarp and tackled Harry flat to the ground just as gunshots exploded. He rolled over beneath her then saw it was her and rolled again, putting himself on top. Around her, the ground exploded in small, desert-brown puffs as bullets landed. It was chaos. Gunfire, people shouting, then roaring motors. Large black vehicles, jacked up with huge tires invaded, and one was about to run them over. It came so close she screamed, but it stopped almost on top of them, and its door opened. She tried to draw her gun, but Harry was on her arm, and then he wasn’t. Someone was pulling him right off her and into the vehicle. “Harry!”
“Maria!” Their eyes locked in a frozen moment and everything he felt for her showed there in his gaze. He struggled and was bashed in the head with the butt of a gun. Then the car door slammed and the vehicle sped away. Other identical SUVs joined it, flinging desert dirt behind them, before they all sped off in different directions.
When he came to, Harrison was in the seat of a big vehicle. He looked around, disoriented, worried about Maria. But she wasn’t with him. And this wasn’t the same vehicle he’d been pulled into. It was a Limo-style SUV. He was in the furthest back seat, leaned sideways against the door.
On the seat beside him… “Carrie! You’re alive!”
“More alive than ever, to be honest with you, Harrison.”
He blinked. “What are you… what happened to you? Are you okay?” Again, he looked toward the front of the vehicle. The only other person inside was the driver, a large man who kept his attention focused dead ahead.
And then slowly, understanding dawned. He frowned and looked at his friend again. “Carrie?”
“Look— I was hired by a company to?—”
“Beckett Oil?” he blurted, and then he wondered if he should’ve let on that he knew.
Her thin eyebrows, arched in surprise. “Where’d you hear that name?”
“His employees have been tilting at windmills all over west Texas. Literally.”
She rolled her eyes. “Windmills, yes, and solar installations, and an EV dealer.” She shook her head slow. “I know. The man’s an idiot.”
“Jimbo Beckett?” he asked. And when she nodded, “And yet you’re working for him. What did he pay you?”
“Plenty, and a house in paradise, but that’s not why I did it. He’s getting John into a clinical trial, Harrison. A promising one, with real hope. And all he asked me to do was not file the patent and bring him the prototypes.”
Even though she was saying it, he was having trouble believing it was true. “A clinical trial isn’t a sure thing. You know that. Who’ll take care of John if it fails, and you’re in prison?”
“Prison? I have a mansion waiting on a tropical island with no extradition.”
“What about the planet? What about our work?”
“What about my sick husband? Doesn’t he deserve this chance?”
“Carrie, the climate?—”
“Oh, come on. Someone else will do what we did. The science is there. Others are working on it. Luckily for me, Beckett doesn’t believe that.”
“So, I’m just?—”
“You’re one remaining loose end,” she said. “At least according to my crazy benefactor.”
Harrison closed his eyes. “He’s going to kill me.”
“No, he’s not.”
“He killed Solomon,” he said.
“Solomon had a heart attack.” Carrie reached out to turn up the air conditioning. “Though Robert probably caused it. It wasn’t deliberate.”
“It was pretty deliberate when someone killed Robert, though,” Harrison said.
Carrie flinched. Then she nodded. “Beckett found out Robert had fudged the data in a study he was part of, twelve years ago. Blackmailed him into helping. Robert didn’t mean to kill Solomon. But Solomon found out I hadn’t filed the patent and started asking questions. Robert was just supposed to scare him to keep him quiet. He was devastated when Solomon collapsed.”
“But he left him lying there alone, all the same. Didn’t even call for help.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know the details. Just that he came to Beckett, saying he wanted out. Taking your car was supposed to be his final act. Beckett told me he planned to let him go after that.” She lowered her head. “I thought he had, but I overheard one of his muscle-heads talking about how cleverly he’d hidden Robert’s body.”
“In a small-town hospital morgue with only one rarely used drawer?”
She nodded, looking at him. “He dressed as a maintenance worker, rolled poor Robert through the hospital inside a trashcan. Found a body bag in the morgue, zipped him in, then planted him in the empty drawer.
“Why?” Harrison asked. “They had to know he’d be found there.”
“The boss wanted him where he’d be found, but not for a few days,” she said. “Who the hell knows why? Like I said, he’s insane. When I realized he’d killed Robert I understood he must plan to kill you, too. You were the only one left, and you’re too squeaky clean to blackmail and too upright to be bought. I got one of his thugs talking. Beckett has a bunch of good ol’ boys on his payroll who do nothing but… solve problems. He told them whoever killed you would get a million, cash.”
“Then why am I alive? Why am I even in this car right now?”
“Because of me, Harrison.” She looked him right in the eyes. “I convinced him, I think, that there are more projects in the works than he can’t hope to stop on his own, and that he needs scientists who work in the field to tell him which pose the biggest threats to his precious oil-based lifestyle.”
“That’s stupid, there are hundreds.”
“”Shh!” She shot a quick look forward, toward the driver. He had earbuds in his ears. “Do not tell Jimbo that,” she said. “Listen, this is not a smart man. But he’s got billions and so far, he believes what I tell him. So, when I told him that his notion of sabotaging any renewable project that was getting close could work, he believed me. And when I told him it was a few more projects than I can monitor all by myself, and that I needed your help, he believed me again.”
Harrison closed his eyes and shook his head. “And he’s doing this in the misguided notion that it will preserve his oil business?”
“He’s trying to preserve his way of life,” she said. “He’s a dinosaur looking at an approaching asteroid, and I think it broke him, Harrison. Broke his mind and broke his heart. He thinks he can stop it. He can’t, and he won’t, but he refuses to believe that. So…”
“You’re cashing in.”
“I’m saving my husband’s life… and his mind.”
“You scared your husband half to death. What was with the blood on the safe door? Huh?”
“I had to make it look real,” she said. “Besides, he doesn’t remember trauma for more than an hour anymore. But I can help him. I can give him back his life. I’m smarter than Beckett. I tell him what he wants to hear and do just enough to make it believable.”
“Doing just enough o make it believable got Solomon and Robert killed.”
“That was not my intent,” she said, as if that made it right. “I advise you to take the same approach with him. Our species isn’t gonna make it, anyway. I might as well get all I can out of life.”
He shook his head slowly. “I refuse to believe that. There’s hope— there’s hope because of the very work we’ve done, and others are doing.”
She shrugged and resumed driving. “Maybe you’re right. But if there’s any chance I can have my husband back, then that’s enough.”
“What about the solar tile?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“What did you do with it?”
She glanced out her window, effectively hiding her expression. “I crushed it and tossed the pieces into the river.”
It was a lie and he knew it. She’d put thousands of hours into the solar tile, same as he had. There was no way she could bring herself to destroy it. Was there?
Maybe there was. Maybe he’d never known Carrie at all.
“I came to your wedding,” he said, “We’ve been friends for?—”
“That’s why you’re still alive, Harrison,” she said softly.
“I’m not selling out to him. I won’t.”
She sent him a worried look. “Then I don’t know if I can stop him from killing you. But I’m giving you a chance,” she said. “You have to convince that filthy rich lunatic that he needs you alive more than he needs you dead. Understand?”
He wanted to shake her and realized he’d never known her at all. “Before I end up dead, I’m curious, how did your boss know about my flight home, that I was at my dad’s, or what time I’d land?”
“I don’t know. I heard him say Senator Tompkins owed him a bigger favor than he owed Garrett Brand. Could that have had something to do with it?”
Harrison thought of the gifts in the private jet’s galley, the friendly, helpful note from its owner, the senator. It made him wonder aloud, “Honest people are few and far between, aren’t they?”
“Endangered species,” Carrie replied.
The family gathered at the ranch. That was what they did when trouble came. They pulled together. Most of the elders were out with law enforcement, searching. Drew and her mom, Penny, were working from Penny’s home office. She had access to all her P.I. stuff there.
Maria was petrified— she felt as if her body had gone rigid and brittle. There was a low-level tremor that felt as if it was emanating from her soul, but for Lily and Hyram, she kept a brave face. They were in the living room, on the sofa. Blue Boy had taken up position on their feet, as if he knew they were in need of comforting.
Willow got off her phone call and said, “We’ve located every last one of those vehicles, abandoned in different areas. None were registered or had a lick of paperwork in them. They’re running down the VINs, but they were bought for cash and delivered to a vacant lot where they were signed for by John Smith.”
“It’s Beckett,” Maria said. “It has to be.”
Every phone in the room chirped, and Maria pulled hers out to see a message on the family loop.
Drew: Attaching list of 5 closest Beckett-owned properties.
Maria opened the file. It was a list of addresses.
“That first one’s one of his homes,” Jessi said. “His whole family— kids, grandkids— are there every June. Unlikely he’d take Harry where there are so many people.”
Bubba said, “I know the fourth one. It’s a honky tonk out on Finn Road. I can check that.
“That one,” said a voice from right close to Maria’s ear, making her jump. It had sounded just like Lily’s voice. Only it couldn’t have been, because Harry’s sister was sitting on the sofa across the room, petting Blue Boy. Maria looked around, but saw only family, none of them near her ear.
“I’m comin’ with you Bubba,” she said.
“We want to go with someone too,” Lily said, the real one this time. Maria didn’t even think about saying no.
“Second address is in town,” Orrin pointed out. “Mom and Drew can check that out. I’ll head in to back them up.”
Baxter said, “I’ll check the huntin’ lodge on Wood Canyon Road. “Trevor, you can ride shotgun.”
Willow raised her hands, saying, “Hold up, hold up. This is police business. We can’t have the family just go charging in?—”
There was a sarcastic laugh, from Aunt Chelsea of all people. Then she said, “Your uncle Garrett got that list too, hon. And he’s been letting you lead this. Have you noticed? Showing you how good you are. And you are. But he’s had your back the whole time and he has your back now. He’ll share that list with the rest of law enforcement, don’t you worry. And he’ll do it quick, because he knows this family. Heck, he raised this family.”
Willow shook her head. “Strictly recon, you hear? Don’t approach or do anything until law enforcement arrives. I’ll take some deputies out to the fifth address. Stay in contact! Hyram, Lily, you can ride with me.”
Brands spilled from the house. Maria followed Bubba toward an ordinary blue pickup truck. He opened her door for her and kept walking around to the driver’s side. She got in. “It’s an okay truck,” she said. “Rental?”
“Loaner. Mine’s totaled. Insurance is replacin’ it, but it’ll take a bit to find one with the same color and trim package. I can wait.”
Sure he could, she thought, but she knew how much he’d loved his truck. He pulled the sub-standard replacement into motion, and they drove out, part of a small parade passing beneath the familiar TeXas Brand arch, leaving a comet’s tail of dust behind them.
One by one, they split off in different directions, until she and Bubba were on their own.
Seventeen miles later, they drove past the saloon. It was a slab-sided, one-story building with a roof that only slanted in one direction. Its front windows had neon beer signs, lit up 24/7, whether the place was open or closed.
It was closed just then, according to the sign hanging on the brown door that looked like it belonged in a country home. There were no vehicles in the driveway, but as they passed, Maria saw at least two parked out behind.
“Big SUV out there, and a pickup,” she said. “I’m texting the loop.”
Bubba turned the truck around in the road and started back toward the bar. “I’ll get as close as I can. We can sneak in from there, see if we can get a gander at our boy.”
“If they hurt Harry, I’m gon’ lose it, Bubba.”
“Harrison,” Bubba said. “He really wants to be called Harrison. And I really want to be called Ethan.”
She frowned and looked at him. “Really? It’s that big a deal?”
“It is,” he said.
She frowned at him, and then said, “I apologize, Bub— Ethan. Dang, that’s gon’ take some gettin’ used to.”