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  “Sure, I’ve ridden all through these woods. There’s a whole network of trails. We could hike around here the rest of the day if you want.” Not a trace of anxiety, or guilt, or whatever he’d been hoping for. Just the kind of exasperation you might expect from a woman being asked to climb a hill in flip-flops.

  And she was right that the trees were thick. No sunlight made it all the way to the forest floor. In fact, there was such a tangle of fallen trees and branches on both sides of the trail it would be hard to get out of the way if a dirt bike came along.

  So he gave up, took pity on her feet, and turned back to the car. Maybe he wasn’t ever going to get any information from her. Maybe he should tell his bosses that, get himself taken off this assignment. Maybe that would be best.

  Except the investigation would still go on. She would still be at risk. And he would have to stay away from her. As if to confirm the hopelessness of the situation, they ended up eating their lunch surrounded by piles of cow shit and hounded by the inevitable flies that bred in the stuff.

  “Looks like the timber company leases grazing rights as well as campsites,” he said.

  “You camp up here, you’re always chasing cows away,” she said. “I’m sorry I made you stop and eat here, but I was getting hungry.”

  At least she was willing to admit the cow pies were partly her fault. Because once he’d realized what a dumb idea this had been, he would have driven on to the St. Joe. But as soon as they’d got back in the car, she’d claimed to be hungry. So he’d found this spot by the river where at least the brush wasn’t too thick, and it didn’t seem to be anyone’s campsite. He’d even found a fallen log that not only gave them a place to sit out of the dirt but had kept the cows from dumping right here.

  But she’d hardly taken two bites of her sandwich before setting it aside.

  Which had immediately gotten the attention of the flies. He kept trying to shoo them away and wondered what was bothering her. Maybe she’d noticed the surveillance on her street. Maybe if he mentioned the white van, that would get her to open up.

  “I don’t think I should have left Uncle Michael this morning,” she said.

  That was the problem? “He didn’t look as if he was going to get far from his computer all day.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if he’s still seeing those friends of his. He’s been going out more than he used to. But it isn’t just that. This morning what he was reading, it was really strange, and when I asked him about it, he got so upset he had to go lie down.”

  “But isn’t that just the way he is? Sometimes he needs to be alone?” Wes waved another fly away from her sandwich.

  “So then I went through his browsing history. I mean I know he reads a lot of weird stuff.”

  “There’s a lot of weird stuff out there to read.”

  “True. And he is kind of paranoid, so the stuff he reads is paranoid, and he doesn’t seem to take it seriously. At least that was what I thought.”

  “These are sure terrific sandwiches,” said Wes. “I’ve never been a big fan of avocados because they’re always sliding out, but these, hey, I hardly dropped a single one on my shirt.” Maybe if she would just eat the damn sandwich, the flies would back off.

  But this didn’t get even a smile from her. She just kept staring out at the river, ignoring both her sandwich and the flies.

  “The stuff Uncle Michael was reading today, it was worse than I thought,” she said.

  “If you don’t want to eat your sandwich,” he said, “we should wrap it back up.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was beginning to suspect she’d asked to stop only to get the picnic thing out of the way so they could head back home, and the way this was going, he was ready to do that too. He found the plastic bag the sandwich had come in.

  “He was reading about explosives,” she said.

  Now the avocado was in fact sliding out. He tried to poke it back between the slices of bread.

  “Don’t you think that’s a concern?” she asked.

  The tomato was uncooperative too.

  “Your uncle has always seemed pretty sensible to me,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought. Do you think he’s been reading about explosives all the time? And I just never noticed before?”

  The fact that the bag was greasy with mayonnaise didn’t help. “Have you ever checked what he was reading before?”

  She just stared out at the river some more. It was clogged with debris from the spring runoff, but here where the forest was at least somewhat open, the sun threw sparks of light along the surface of the water, and in her hair. That was what he noticed once he had the sandwich safely sealed away, somewhat misshapen but maybe not totally mangled. Her hair was lit like pixie dust, and her legs dangling off that log were as slim and curvy as Tinkerbell’s, who had been the first sex symbol to turn him on when he was a kid. She’d painted her toenails Orphan Annie red.

  Maybe they could fuck on this log.

  No, she wasn’t in the mood for that. She was too caught up in fretting about her uncle. But although her obsessing over him had sure screwed up the day, one of the reasons Wes was having all these new feelings for her—and turning his life into such a mess—was that she cared so deeply for Michael.

  “Look, your uncle isn’t going to hurt anyone,” he said. “I guess I don’t know him very well, but I think I know a little about the kinds of people who blow things up.” In fact anymore, identifying the potential for mass violence was an essential part of his training.

  “You’re right, he’s never hurt any living thing,” she said. “Except for maybe a few mosquitoes.” And finally, she smiled.

  But since she was still looking fairly worried, he said, “Didn’t you once tell me he had a shrink? Maybe you’d feel better if you talked to his shrink.”

  Chapter 17

  The next day Wes was alone in the house because Annie and Michael had gone to Spokane to see Michael’s shrink, who had been sufficiently concerned about the possibility of having his name in the news as the psychiatrist of a mass murderer that he hadn’t wanted to put them off through the Fourth of July weekend which started tomorrow.

  So Wes was catching up on his reports.

  This, of course, was unusually challenging since he wasn’t doing his assignment the way it was supposed to be done, and most of what he was doing he couldn’t put in a report. He was lying to Annie, but he was lying to his bosses too. He was wondering if Hector had told anyone about their conversation. He was wondering how soon he would be yanked out of here, and probably canned. It was next to impossible to concentrate on these stupid reports.

  Especially since he was in Annie’s bedroom.

  There was a little desk there with a good desk chair and a good light where she did her own computer work. The dining room table was out of the question due to Michael’s junk mail fetish, but the kitchen table might have been a better choice. Maybe the kitchen wasn’t as distractingly infused with her scent.

  He was considering moving to the kitchen while remembering the saucy glint in her eyes this morning when she kissed him good-bye, as intimate a kiss as she could do in front of her uncle, thanking him with that wicked glint for his great idea—which hadn’t been a great idea at all. He’d suggested she consult Michael’s shrink only because it might make her feel better, but she seemed to think this Dr. Kortge would make everything okay.

  If only that were true.

  He was also staring at a guitar that looked more like a piece of driftwood, except it was nothing like driftwood. It was polished to a deep luster, and its dark rich brown was mottled with shades of green and blue. He hadn’t known wood could be green or blue. So maybe he was thinking about Michael too. And his troubling taste in websites. Last night when Michael had briefly left his computer unattended—due to his need to defrag or reboot himself with his cat again—Annie had shown Wes his browsing history. Could such a gentle-seeming guy turn into a bomber?

  So Wes was thinking about all
sorts of things, but none of them was the possibility that someone might break into the house. He heard the click of a door latch, and there was a delay before he even wondered what door. But the footsteps in the kitchen downstairs were unmistakable. Then there were voices. It was too soon for Annie and Michael to be back. It wasn’t their voices anyway. It was two men.

  More than likely the back door hadn’t been locked, and Annie’s band members might be used to walking right in. Or maybe she had other friends who would do that—although she didn’t seem to have much in the way of friends, probably due to the illegal business into which she’d gotten herself. But these men weren’t calling out for her the way a friend would.

  They spoke in low voices, short exchanges, and they were moving through the downstairs rooms.

  By then Wes’s training was kicking in. Not so much his DEA work. Muffled sounds moving through a house, unknown men approaching, this was more the sort of thing he’d dealt with in Iraq. The adrenaline he’d missed when he’d tried to work at a normal job began rushing through his veins again, heightening all his senses, putting his muscles on alert. He listened for every footstep, every muttered word, every rustle of cloth. He fished his gun and badge from where he’d hidden them in his duffle, stuck his badge in the back pocket of his shorts, and slipped down the stairs.

  He was barefoot, so he did this almost silently except the last step squeaked.

  He froze. The men were still moving, still talking. They must not have heard the squeak.

  Annie always kept the door at the foot of the stairs closed to keep Lisa from hairing her bed. Still listening for every movement in the house, he turned the knob. That was silent too. But when he pushed on the door, its hinges sounded like a four-year-old with his first violin.

  More adrenaline shot through him as he cautiously tried to push on the door, but the slower it swung the more shrill the violin.

  The men’s voices stopped.

  He’d managed to achieve only a four inch gap. Through that gap he couldn’t see anyone or anything out of place. Also, no one yelled, “Hey, who’s there?” the way a friend of Annie’s would.

  Instead, he heard hurrying, loud, heavy feet. The intruders wore boots.

  And now they knew he was here.

  He stepped back behind the door jamb. Channeling more flashbacks from house to house warfare, he kicked the door the rest of the way open. Perversely, it didn’t make a sound when it swung quickly like that. He still couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything anymore either.

  The intruders must have been listening too.

  He stepped into the living room and ducked behind one of the overstuffed chairs, his gun just peeking around a doilied armrest.

  Still no one in sight.

  Since Annie had centered the couch for the stereo speakers, it stood right between the living and dining rooms like a room divider. Bent over to keep it between himself and the dining room, he crept to the other end of it. Through the trestle legs of one of Michael’s mother’s end tables, he could then see the whole floor of the dining room.

  No booted feet. The junk mail looked intact.

  And silence as if the intruders had disappeared.

  This was a lot like Iraq.

  Now the only sound was the thumping of his own blood as he sorted out his choices. The intruders might be in the kitchen, or they could have gone down the hall that led to the bathroom and Michael’s bedroom. If he slipped into the dining room from here, he would be shielded from the kitchen by the wall that separated it from the dining room but exposed to the doorway that led to the hall. If he went back to the other end of the couch and entered the dining room from there, along the wall with the buffet, he wouldn’t be visible from the hall, but he would be vulnerable to anyone who might be in the kitchen.

  It was one of those choices that could have cost him his life in Iraq.

  But these weren’t jihadists, in spite of the way every nerve in his body was humming now. Since this was Idaho instead of Iraq, these were probably burglars, and burglars were seldom armed while homeowners were known to shoot. So burglars, once they knew someone was home, usually fled.

  Then Lisa came scooting out of the hall, tail puffed up. She ran into the kitchen.

  And Wes had to question the intelligence of these burglars.

  They hadn’t retreated out the back door. Instead, they’d cornered themselves, probably in Michael’s bedroom where Lisa had been asleep.

  Did that mean they were armed?

  He scooted back around the couch to the end that wasn’t visible from the hall and sidled along the buffet leading with his gun. He reached the doorway to the hall, but he didn’t enter it.

  This wasn’t the time or place to charge in gun blazing military style. Instead, he should identify himself.

  Except then, with his brain still scanning possibilities at something close to urban warfare speed, it occurred to him that these might not be burglars. Why would they be? What was here to steal? Michael’s computer was way out of date. Only the sound system might be worth anything, unless there was a market for doilies or junk mail.

  What if instead this was the organization come to replace their bugs? Then he shouldn’t identify himself. He shouldn’t interfere at all. Let them reinstall their bugs. He could always remove them again. In fact, in the scenario he was considering now, he shouldn’t be here. He wondered if they had an outside man who would see him if he slipped out the front door.

  There was a soft click and Lisa came scurrying from the kitchen. She glanced at him but didn’t stop. Tail still puffed, she headed for the living room, her paws skidding on the hardwood floor. She leaped over the couch, then must have spotted the open door that was usually closed. He heard her gallop much louder than you would think a small cat would up the stairs.

  Now partially obscured by the thumping of the cat, who would soon be hairing Annie’s bed, were more footsteps, softer than the others, probably tennis shoes, in the kitchen. The others had called this one in?

  The guy in the kitchen would soon see Wes.

  He slipped back along the buffet and tried to hide behind a chair in the corner. Which was piled with junk mail, of course. He managed to squeeze in between the chair and the wall, but an avalanche of mail crashed onto the floor.

  A gun barrel poked around the edge of the kitchen doorway.

  He shoved the chair forward to get deeper into the corner. More mail sloughed off, but that didn’t matter anymore. Now behind the protection of the buffet, he sighted his gun through the slats of the chair at the one in the doorway.

  Boots moved in the hall.

  The gun in the doorway shifted toward the opening to the hall. So kitchen guy wasn’t with boot guys? What the hell was going on?

  Wes was pretty sure he could take out kitchen guy’s hand.

  Only he still wasn’t sure he should do anything at all. If these were Annie’s bosses, was he about to blow an investigation that had taken three years? If he was really just Annie’s boyfriend, wouldn’t his first thought be to escape?

  While kitchen guy still seemed to be distracted by the movement in the hall, Wes made a dash for the front door. There was a shot. Then another one. He was out of the house by then, but now there was no way he was just going to leave and let whatever was happening here keep on happening.

  These men were trashing Annie’s house!

  He ran to a basement window that Michael often opened for ventilation, thinking it might be unlocked. It wasn’t. More of Michael’s paranoia? He shattered the glass with his gun. He reached the latch. He swung the window open. He dropped through it into Michael’s shop.

  A couple more shots rang out.

  At least whoever those guys were, they were keeping each other busy. They might even disable each other before he could get back up there. And the gun fight should draw the men in the hall up to where it opened into the dining room, so the basement door would be behind them.

  Wes crept up the basement
stairs.

  Another shot. The door at the top of the stairs splintered as a bullet passed through, confirming what he’d been thinking. He needed to stop this. He shoved the door open and slipped into Michael’s bedroom. Sure enough, there was no one there now. Instead, two men were crouched at the dining room end of the hall, totally focused on kitchen guy.

  He could easily shoot them both in the back.

  It was tempting. It was almost automatic the way his blood was pumping now. Riddle the enemy with holes. Ask questions later, if at all.

  But he hadn’t reenlisted in the army. In spite of the thrill of the adrenaline, there had been a lot of things he hadn’t liked about the war. He’d gone for this more civilized style of enforcement, which meant if he shot these guys he’d be writing reports for weeks.

  Also, his bullets would make more holes in Annie’s house.

  “Federal agent!” he called. “Drop your weapons! Down on the floor!”

  The men glanced back over their shoulders but didn’t drop their weapons. One was a huge, aging, but still powerful African-American. The other was younger, smaller, and white with a pointy face. “No,” said the one who might have once been a linebacker.

  While Wes was processing this odd response—odd because it had been said so reasonably, so authoritatively, not like a belligerent criminal—pointy face said, “We’re federal agents. Drop your weapon.”

  And Wes’s brain seemed to freeze the way DVD’s sometimes freeze, and the picture breaks up into little squares because the DVD is so screwed up the machine can’t get a read on it. He stayed behind the wall of Michael’s bedroom trying to get a read on this mess. So these guys were here to replace the bugs? But they weren’t from some drug cartel. His boss had lied to him, and the next time he talked to that condescending asshole, he would tell him what a near disaster he’d created with his lies.

  Then a voice came from the kitchen. “Hey, I’m a federal agent too.”

  The DVD in Wes’s brain threatened to break up again, but he fished his badge out of his pocket, let his heartbeat drop back to normal, stuck his gun into the back of his shorts, and came out into the hall. “DEA,” he said. “You too?”