Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
GABE
After tromping into Knute’s living room and flipping the deadbolt, Elton and Knute ganged up on Gabe.
“Call Niall. Now,” Elton said.
“I vote for waiting until morning,” Gabe grumbled. “I’ll have to check in about the FBI if he doesn’t call me anyway.”
“Nope,” Knute interjected. “Tonight. The man is an ex-cop. He’s used to calls at all hours.”
“It’s literally the middle of the night,” Gabe whined. “Have you met the man?”
Knute scoffed. “He’d rather you call now than have you end up like Wilson or Spurring.”
“Fine.” He wasn’t sure Niall felt that way, but it seemed the old men weren’t giving him a choice.
Niall answered in two rings. “This better be good, Karne.”
“It is, I swear. No, you’re right, it’s not. There are new flies in the ointment you need to be aware of.”
Gabe’s report included a description of what he and Elton had seen the Temu wise guys do at lunch because, until a couple of hours ago, he hadn’t considered them important.
“And Casey is missing, but Greta has that covered.” Not that Gabe wasn’t having an internal meltdown, he absolutely was. But Casey was fucking coming home. Gabe hadn’t fucked around his whole life only to settle down and have his partner disappear forever.
“Stay put.” And the line was dead.
“He could seriously use some public relations training,” Gabe said, squinting at his phone.
Sleep was impossible. Gabe brooded while Knute busied himself making the coffee he’d promised.
People did disappear, all the time. For every reason imaginable. But Casey was steady, solid. Which meant that something had happened to him up The Valley.
“Greta and her team will find him,” Elton said, as if he knew exactly where Gabe’s thoughts had drifted.
Gabe snorted. Drifted? More like floated up on a king tide in a winter storm.
Twenty minutes later Gabe was still sitting in Knute’s kitchen, staring into space and trying to manifest Casey to safety.
There’d been no word from Greta—because it was still fucking dark-thirty and she was getting a rescue team together and everything that entailed.
She did not need him calling her to double-check now.
He had his hands wrapped around a second mug of coffee when the chords of Sade’s Smooth Operator broke the silence.
Elton eyed him from the other side of the table.
“Casey thought it was funny,” Gabe explained. And normally he had his ringer turned off.
“If you don’t answer the damn thing, one of us will,” Elton told him.
Sitting beside Elton, Knute nodded. “Get to it.”
“Fine.” Gabe poked at his screen, but the unknown caller had hung up already. Moments later, a text appeared.
Niall: Klay called you. He’ll call back. Pick up the damn phone when he does.
Gabe debated texting back to ask how it was possible to sound bossy and pushy via text message, but he didn’t want to start shit with his ex-homicide detective half brother.
The guy knew where and how to hide bodies.
And besides, Gabe just didn’t have the energy. He’d spent it all worrying about Casey.
Gabe: Fine.
Succinct and to the point. Thirty seconds later, Smooth Operator broke the silence again.
“Gabriel Karne.”
“Mr. Karne, this is SAC Adam Klay speaking.”
Special Agent in Charge Klay sounded almost as grim as Niall. Gabe had to remind himself he’d done nothing wrong.
“Please, Gabe or Gabriel will do. Mr. Karne makes me sound respectable.”
The SAC did not laugh.
“I just spoke with Niall Hamarsson. Earlier, he had texted me some information about the Petyr family and that he would call and set up a meeting tomorrow morning, but apparently the situation has changed. Care to catch me up on what’s happened in the past few hours?”
“Yeah. I think two of the Petyrs showed up at my house a couple hours ago.”
“Are you safe?”
Safety was the agent’s first concern, which was nice.
Any danger was all on you, Chance.
“I am for now anyway. Hiding out at Knute Bakke’s house in Westfort.
More importantly, my partner didn’t come home from his shift last night,” he told Klay.
“What are the chances they caught up with him? He’s a forest ranger, and his last known location was…
” Gabe let his voice trail off. Casey’s last known location was smack where bodies had been found, most recently Calvin Perkins’s.
“Keep talking.”
“Well, you probably already know this, but there’s been some… stuff going on around here. Corruption and murder, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s centered around an abandoned development site. Which is also near Casey’s last known location.”
“Noted. My office is aware of the events that have occurred in your area. I’m sorry about your partner.” He cleared his throat and continued. “What’s happened in the last few hours specifically? Keep it short—time is of the essence—but try not to leave anything out.”
Gabe took a second to appreciate that Special Agent Klay didn’t tell him the information about Casey being missing wasn’t important. And that he also didn’t try and blow smoke up his ass with some canned variation of everything-will-be-okay nonsense.
After taking a sip of the coffee Knute had made, Gabe related what had occurred at his house earlier. From Klay’s follow-up questions, it was clear that his conversation with Niall had filled him in but that he wanted to hear Gabe’s version of events.
“How were you involved in finding Emmett Spurring at the fort?” Klay asked.
“Right. Well, Niall probably told you this too, but—” Gabe started with his Monday morning appointment and ended with setting up a meeting with Spurring in the fort that afternoon.
“Spurring was conscious for maybe two minutes after I arrived. I figured he meant my ex, Peter Vale, who was murdered last fall. But Knute, who’s a retired Westfort cop, thought he meant P-e-t-y-r.
Which, they don’t sound like very nice people, and they do sound like the type who would break into my house in the dead of night and kill me if they thought I was a threat to them. ”
Or hurt Casey to get to Gabe.
SAC Klay agreed. “Especially if they are concerned that Spurring had time to point his finger their way. Which he did. They were probably already keeping an eye on him. Not many get out of the Petyr network in one piece.”
Had the Wonder Twins spotted Gabe at the Geoduck? They’d been focused on the server. Was she a victim of theirs? She’d acted like one.
“They could have seen me at lunch. Or maybe Spurring told them I was on my way. All he said to me was what sounded like Peter—hence the confusion—and that he tried to get out.” Gabe took a breath, then added, “I don’t even know if Spurring’s alive.”
Gabe didn’t like the man, but he didn’t want him dead.
And while he was glad the FBI was taking this seriously, what he needed more than anything was for Casey to walk into Knute’s house—magically knowing Gabe was there—and into his arms. A call from Greta that he’d been found would be good too. Alive, of course.
“It’s touch and go,” Klay said. “Someone tried to gain access to his room, which is why I decided to talk to you tonight instead of waiting until morning, especially after learning what happened at your home.”
“Well, shit.”
Klay grunted his agreement. “Could you describe your visitors to me in your own words, please?”
At least Klay knew how to use the word please.
“Um, my height, I guess, so five eleven and a bit. Dark hair, lean body type—they both seemed pretty fit. I’d say enforcement, having had some experience with those types. One guy had a shoulder holster underneath his jacket. Oh, and I heard one of them say, ‘We have our instructions.’”
“Would you be able to identify them?”
Gabe sighed and pictured the two men. “Yeah, I think so. I got a pretty good look at them at the restaurant and at my house.”
“I’m putting together a team; they’ll be on location ASAP, probably a few hours out. Stay at Bakke’s.”
The line went dead. Gabe stared at his phone before setting it on the table. There must have been some kind of special job training where LEOs learned to abruptly end calls.
“Well?” Elton and Knute demanded in tandem.
“How does he—never mind. FBI. Spurring is alive for now, but an unknown person tried to gain access to his hospital room. What he didn’t say but I heard anyway is that they’ve been watching the Petyrs for a while now.”
Knute nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised by that. These Petyrs seem to have been moving fast lately. That’s historically when they’ve made mistakes though. Like not finishing the job they were sent to do.”
“For which I am glad,” said Elton.
No one spoke again as they all processed the evening’s events.
Gabe for one thought about how close he had come to not sitting at that table, but then frustration bubbled over.
Waiting around had never been his way. Gabe grabbed his mug and slammed back the last of his coffee. It burned all the way down.
He rose to his feet and crossed over to the slider, staring out into Knute’s dark backyard. The same dark that Casey was out in, somewhere.
Alive. He had to be alive.
Turning back around, he said, “This is fucking ridiculous. I should be out looking for Casey. I can’t sit around twiddling my thumbs for hours waiting for who the fuck knows what.”
Search and rescue is not your skill set, Chance.
Fine.