Chapter 2
Sheriff Sondra Steele watched the temp waitress with increasing astonishment.
“I wouldn’t have thought an extra two waitresses would have handled this crowd,” her husband Michael said softly, his own gaze on the young girl as she expertly whipped a heavy tray of entrees onto a folding stand.
“She’s all of what? Seventeen? Eighteen?” Sondra asked. “You know kids’ ages better than I do.” Michael was a science teacher at the Perin high school.
“Yeah, maybe. She hardly seemed to write anything down,” Michael said.
“Actually, she didn’t write anything at all, Dad,” Cody said absently.
“What?” his father asked.
“She just squiggled on the page,” the ten-year-old said.
“You sure?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, I watched. No writing.”
“What, you’re saying she remembered all that?” Sondra asked.
Cody shrugged.
“Honey, do you realize if she didn’t write anything down, then she just remembered over forty orders of food and drink, who they went with, and the sides and appetizers each ordered?
” Michael responded. “That had to be in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty separate items spread across a group of people she’s never met? ”
The girl finished the final booth and the whole diner gave her a rousing round of applause.
She smiled tightly, blushed, and moved quickly back to the kitchen.
Short blonde hair, hazel eyes, five-five, and maybe one hundred fifteen pounds, Sondra noted to herself automatically, her professional instincts piqued by this extraordinarily efficient newcomer.
Primarily Caucasian but maybe something else in the mix, based on the slight cant to her eyes.
Everyone around them was talking about the display of waiting prowess while they all dug in.
Sondra stood up and moved to the kitchen, pushing through the swinging doors.
Inside, she found Mort Callahan talking to the girl who was eating a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn while standing up.
“Hey Sheriff, help me convince young Anna here to come work full-time,” Mort said.
“I’d love to but I’m still on my trip,” the girl, Anna, said with a shy smile, ducking her head.
Shy or trying to avoid Sondra’s eyes? Hmm.
“How’d you know how to run the register?” Monica asked. “I’m still learning it myself.”
“My gramma needed to upgrade her register, and she put me in charge of finding the right system,” Anna said. “I looked at this one but picked another. Still remember how to work this one though.”
“You have the most remarkable memory I’ve ever seen,” Sondra said, watching to see how the girl would respond.
“Oh, it’s just lots of hours working for Gram,” she said. “And my own kind of shorthand.” Sondra didn’t buy it for a moment.
“Where are you from, Anna?” she asked.
“Michigan. I just graduated high school, and I always promised myself a bicycle adventure when I was done.”
“What about college?” Sondra asked, leaning against the wall.
“I received an associate’s degree at the same time I got my high school diploma. Advanced Placement courses and college at high school. I can’t afford any other college right now.”
“What’s your degree in?”
“Ah, Economics and Poly Science.”
“Impressive work, young lady. Are your parents okay with you out on your tour by yourself? The road can be a dangerous place.”
Something flashed in the girl’s eyes, a slight hint of maybe anger, maybe sadness. “My father passed, Sheriff, and I don’t have a mother… but I’m a very capable person, ma’am. And I don’t need the money from tonight… I mean, I won’t turn it down, but I saved up for this trip for a long time.”
“You are clearly capable. No one in that room out there would argue that point,” Sondra said with a smile.
“Sheriff, is that something Brian would be involved in?” Mort asked suddenly, pointing at the television screen in the upper corner of the kitchen. It was set to a news channel, and a breaking news banner was trumpeting a violent attack in New York City.
“Looks terrorist-related so yeah, probably,” Sondra said, watching a replay of a group of balaclava-wearing men shooting up a group of police officers, then throwing bombs that blew up two armored special police vehicles.
“My brother is an agent with the FBI,” she explained to Anna. “He heads a counterterrorist task force.”
“Tell him to stay home,” the girl said, her eyes locked on the screen. “That’s probably a false flag attack. Corporate driven. Maybe a pump and dump.”
“What?” Sondra asked, frowning.
“Second attacker on the right has a Ranger tattoo on his left wrist. It’s visible at about the ten-second mark.
They’re using AK-47 clones, which is weird ’cause the most common rifle in America is the AR-15.
Why try to smuggle in a foreign gun? And they threw the bombs at the sides of the armored vehicles?
Right where the armor is thickest. How’s that supposed to hurt them?
Also, almost no one got hurt… what are the odds?
” Anna said, then froze up like she just realized what she had said.
“I should start clearing,” she said and left the kitchen.
Sondra stood, partially aware that her mouth was open but still unable to come to grips with what she’d heard. After a few seconds, she scoffed. Kid thought she knew it all. Then her phone buzzed. It was a text from her brother.
Did you see?
She answered him immediately.
Yeah, my 18-year-old waitress says it’s a false flag. Ranger tattoo on left wrist of second right of the five-man group. Ten-second mark. Crazy kid.
Seconds ticked by and he didn’t answer, so she went back out to the dining room.
Michael and the boys were having a three-way French fry sword fight, their meals half gone in the time she had spent chatting up the new girl. She tucked in to her own Rueben sandwich while watching the girl, Anna, clear dishes and refill drinks. Her phone buzzed, so she picked it up.
“Mom! No phones,” Tony, her oldest said.
“Work, honey,” she said, which was the one exception to the family rule on cell phones at the table. The text was from Brian.
Who the hell caught that tattoo? No way it was Loretta.
Loretta is sick tonight. Stranger. Passing through and filling in. Just a kid.
Kid who caught something no one on my team did?
She’s kind of remarkable.
Color me intrigued. Got a picture?
Holding her phone up like she was simply reading it, Sondra triggered the camera and took a couple of photos of Anna, immediately sending them to her brother, then added her own demand. Details?
Her brother’s task force had more funding than her town’s annual budget and he had some amazing data specialists on his staff with advanced facial recognition software.
Cassandra Anna Blake. Eighteen last month. Rifle Springs, Michigan. No priors, but natural hair color is brunette not blond.
Um, more? Sondra texted back.
No online presence. Public news sources indicate she is a state poetry champion in Michigan, has a gold and silver medal in Teen Level Judo competitions, and, ah, her father, Ryan Blake, was an Army Ranger. He passed… just eight days ago, from virulent cancer.
The three stars of activity kept blinking, so she took another bite and waited.
Grandfather also was a Ranger. Father was decorated after one tour in Afghanistan and two in Iran… ah, DOD has blocked Ryan’s records, but he left service eighteen years ago as a Master Sergeant and Team Leader in the Regimental Reconnaissance Company – Tier One Operator – 75th Ranger Regiment.
Called back to service six years ago then released from service after two years. Mother is listed as Kaitlyn Shipley but has no online presence or records. None. At all. No IRS records, no Social Security number, birth certificate, nothing.
Also, she may be right on her analysis of the New York event. One of our databases indicates the Ranger tattoo guy is likely a private contractor. Passing the whole thing to Major Crimes.
Holy shit, this kid had to have some kind of story. Sondra had her own questions to ask. Why use the middle name. No crime in changing hair color, but combined with the so-called bike trip, it made the cop in her stand up, antennae quivering.
Any grandparents still alive?
Grandfather, Allen Blake, living in senior community in Pheonix Arizona. Let me know what you find out.
He knew her too well, and her Spidey Sense for true mysteries.
“You’re all fired up,” Michael said. He knew her just as well as her brother. “You going to make the town meeting?”
“I’m sending Myers instead.”
“My girl can’t abide a mystery,” Michael said, glancing at the waitress.
“You have no idea,” Sondra said. “Brian’s in on this one.”
He glanced at the mysterious teen and then nodded. “Okay. Tony and Cody and I will head home.”
They left as she texted her senior deputy to be her representative at the meeting.
The diner was clearing fast, as the meeting time was rapidly approaching.
Anna was working with the same energy and efficiency as before, but mostly avoided Sondra’s gaze.
But once, as she lifted a loaded tray to her shoulder, she also lifted her eyes and met the sheriff’s gaze for a split second.
Something flickered in the girl’s eyes, but Sondra couldn’t figure out what the micro expression she’d seen meant.
Seconds ticked by as she pondered it, but when the seconds had added up to a full minute and Anna failed to reappear, she suddenly knew what she had seen: realization.
She knew the sheriff had done something.
Sheriff Steele jumped up and ran into the kitchen but found only Mort and Monica. “Where did she go?”
“She took the garbage out,” Monica said, nodding at the back door.
“Shit!” Sondra said, moving directly to the rear exit and straight out into the back. The dumpster lid was open, a recent bag deposited on top, but no Anna in sight. Steele raced out around the front of the building. The girl’s bike was gone.
“Fuck,” the sheriff yelled, then ran for the parking lot. Seconds later, she tore out onto the street in her official vehicle, circling the square, then heading toward the east on Main Street.