Cowboy, Undercover Page 14

  “Inside job?” Gil asked.

  Fisher glanced back at Gil. “That’s the working theory. This SOB was passed around from base to base like a rotten potato that no one wanted to be caught with. Tracking down the guys he’s worked with is like diving down a deep, dark rabbit hole. The guy that was killed, we don’t have a positive ID. Fingerprints not in NCIC.”

  “The National Crime Information Center doesn’t have everything,” Gil said.

  “We’re also cross-referencing with military records and Interpol,” Fisher was quick to point out.

  “Stay on it,” Spinks said.

  Fisher nodded.

  Then Spinks held out his hand toward Massey. “We have Massey Yates here on loan from CTS, one of the nation’s top computer security firms helping us on tracking the money end.”

  Because Massey’s CP affected his speech, Tessa knew he much preferred to work behind the scenes. He had one of those folded paper “football” triangles the kids in middle school used to always play with. He flipped it back and forth over his knuckles.

  Massey dropped the “football” and tugged at his collar. “CTS has proprietary algorithms in beta testing that monitor cryptocurrency on the Dark Web.”

  One of the new agents on the other side of Gil leaned into him and said, “This is messed up. I can’t even understand what he’s saying.”

  The guy could use some lessons in how to whisper. Massey tried to ignore him, but he cut the guy a what-the-fuck, dude? glare. Gil shifted, and Tessa heard an oompf as if Gil had landed an elbow jab to the guy’s solar plexus.

  Under his breath, Gil said, “Shut the hell up and listen.”

  Spinks held up a hand to stop Massey. “There a problem back there?”

  “We’re good,” Gil said. He turned to the agent beside him. “Right?”

  The man managed a tight nod, but no words.

  “Continue,” Spinks told Massey.

  Massey explained about how cryptocurrency was gaining popularity in the criminal world because of its inherent anonymity, and how his company, as part of a national security initiative, monitored large spikes in deposits and transfers in an attempt to track potential black-market buyers and sellers of large quantities of weapons, drugs, diamonds and other black-market sales.

  When Massey paused to take a breath, Cook asked, “So in English for those of us with an IQ a little closer to the double digits, what does this mean?”

  “Saturday night, there was a transfer spike on CoinIt, an up and coming cryptocurrency. One of the accounts was accessed from a computer we tracked to the western part of the state.”

  “Why can’t pinpoint the computer’s location?” This from the guy Gil had elbowed. He still sounded winded.

  Gil caught Tessa’s eyes and hid his grin behind a sip of coffee.

  “CoinIt is using a technology that makes tracing transfers nearly impossible. It routes through unusually high numbers of proxy servers all over the world. Then kind of like that QuickChat app the kids use where the picture or text disappears within seconds of it being read, the electronic trail of the CoinIt transfer disappears as well.

  “If all three box trucks carried similar amounts of weapons, the amount of the CoinIt transfer, when you take in the conversion rate back to US dollars, is consistent with the sale of a weapons cache of the size involved in Saturday night’s bust. We’ve adjusted our algorithm, but we won’t know if it will be successful in tracking the transfer until another one is made.”

  Spinks ended the brief with a couple of housekeeping items and passed out various assignments. To Quinn and Tessa, Spinks said, “You two hold up, we have a quick recon hop for you.”

  As Gil was leaving, he caught her by the elbow and escorted her a little way down the hall. “I’ve got my hour with the shrink this afternoon. I’d really like to see you tonight.” When she hesitated, he added, “After Jack goes to sleep.”

  He’s trying. There hadn’t been a clear demarcation in the boundaries Tessa had set, and he was feeling his way through it. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to see him at all, she just wanted to protect Jack.

  Who’s going to protect you when it all goes to shit?

  Gil’s not like that.

  That’s what you thought about Bradley, but he turned out to be as manipulative and duplicitous as your father.

  Man, she could really pick ‘em.

  “I’d like that.” She glanced down the hall. Almost everyone had filed out of the room, and she gave Massey a nod as he crutched his way down the hall.

  Gil’s gaze went to her lips, even as he took a step back. “You know where to find me.”

  When she walked back into Spinks’ office, only Quinn remained. She took the seat across from him and waited for Spinks to glance up from his computer.

  Spinks clicked through a document, and without looking up, he said, “There something you’re not telling me, Sterling?”

  Had he heard about her and Gil’s extracurricular helo activities? Her scalp tingled and sweat started to bead along her hairline. She glanced at Quinn. He gave her an I’m clueless shrug. “Ehr…excuse me, sir?”

  Spinks leaned back and gave her his full attention. “The break-in at your place.”

  “Oh, that.” Phew. This wasn’t about her and Gil. She wanted to wipe her brow but didn’t want to do anything that might make her look nervous. Spinks didn’t get to be a Special Agent in Charge because he was stupid and unobservant. “You’ve got a lot on your plate. The sheriff’s department is looking into it.”

  “If there is something that affects members of my team, I want to know about it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “About that recon.” With a blip of the remote, the big screen came to life behind Spinks with a satellite view that showed a few rectangular structures that could have been those mobile offices often seen at construction sites. There was also a more massive square building, a warehouse of some sort.

  “What are we looking at?”

  “It’s a coal strip mine operation. Built by BBM, Big Blue Mining, but closed by the EPA a decade ago. Potentially a Superfund cleanup site, but it has been embroiled in lawsuits for years. The GPS from that box truck places it here.”

  “I can’t see a mining company buying weapons,” Quinn said.

  “Our guess is whoever is buying and/or selling those weapons is using this place as temporary storage. It’s off the beaten path. No close neighbors and the surrounding topography make it impossible to see from the road. With the remoteness of the mine, the newest online satellite photo is more than a year old. There is no telling what kind of changes they’ve made if any.”

  “Which is where we come in.” Tessa smiled. Maybe they’d finally get to use their military-grade surveillance cameras that had recently been installed, thanks to money confiscated from a big bust the ATF had had the year before. Word was that the camera’s resolution allowed you to count the gray hairs on a mouse’s nuts from a mile up.

  Not the manufacturer’s exact words, but close.

  It was the perfect tool to allow them to fly high yet get high-resolution photos of the site.

  Spinks filled them in on distance and altitude parameters. They didn’t want the helo to be easily seen or heard on the chance that people were guarding the site.

  Tessa and Quinn beat it back to the hanger. After changing into their flight suits, she met Quinn at the helo. He’d already started on the external visual inspection.

  She strapped into the pilot’s chair and had picked up the pre-flight checklist when Quinn climbed in, wearing a stupid grin on his face.

  “What?” Tessa asked.

  “You’re my hero.”

  “I’m your what?” She listened with one ear as she went down the list, flipping switches and checking gauges.

  “Hero.” He buckled in, but his grin never wavered.

  She turned the APU generator switch to ‘on,’ and marked her spot on the checklist. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.
“How so?”

  “Sex in the back of a helo is on my bucket list. Looked like you’ve crossed it off yours already.”

  How could he know that? Even though it was a complete tell, she glanced behind her, trying to find something that would have given her and Gil away. But everything was as it should be. Except…Tessa pulled her shades to the end of her nose, to see the interior of the Sikorsky better.

  Yeah, that was her bra hooked onto some webbing in the back.

  There wasn’t much point in denying it. “Where did you find it?”

  “Between my seat and the door. The turquoise and lace was a surprise. I’d always pictured you as a gray sports bra kind of woman.”

  She didn’t say anything. Quinn was going to give her a rash of shit no matter what she said. She knew that because they were a lot alike and if she’d found another woman’s bra in the helo, it would be a while before he’d hear the end of it.

  She continued down the list, calling out things for Quinn to check. They started the engines, cleared the tower and climbed to their cruising altitude without another word that didn’t have to do with their flight, but Tessa knew Quinn well enough to know she hadn’t heard the last from him about the sex.

  As they rotored toward the strip mine, Quinn checked to make sure they weren’t on an open channel. “Even before I got my wings, I’ve had helo sex fantasies. Not nearly as much room here as in my Super Stallion, and the ‘60 doesn’t have the ramp, but it’s obviously doable. No deets, but did the reality exceed the fantasy? Please, please say yes. Even if it isn’t true.”

  She gave him a quick glance and said, “You want my advice?”

  “Hit me with it, LT.”

  “We should stash a pair of knee pads back there.”

  9

  Gil mucked out one of the Lazy S’s stalls, one of his least favorite chores because it was quiet work. Raking manure into a wheelbarrow wasn’t too miserable. It was combing through the shit in his head that Gil found extremely foul.

  In the past, Gil’s days at the Lazy S had gone by relatively fast, the manual labor, the horse training, the talks around the campfire, made each day physically and emotionally draining. Most nights, he was almost asleep before his head hit the pillow, but in the three nights since the gun bust, sleep had been an elusive beast.

  As he’d lain awake, his mind had whirled. Isaac and his paralysis, the possibility of going undercover, Mia and whatever was eating at her, nibbled at him… And how the hell was he supposed to spend time with Tessa without getting near the kid? Impossible. Jack was like a cockle-burr, always showing up in the most unlikely places and impossible to shake.

  Not a complaint. The kid was hard not to like.

  Tessa was right to limit his interaction with Jack, because the truth was, if Gil got the undercover assignment, he could be gone a few weeks if they were lucky. Months, possibly. The lowlifes always had their own schedule. They didn’t care if there was a kid back home who might miss him.

  Gil scraped out the pee spot in the middle of the stall and dumped the urine saturated shavings into the wheelbarrow. Out the backside of the barn, he heard a crash and Mia screamed.

  He ran toward the sound. Right outside the rear barn doors, Mia lay sprawled out on the ground, a wheelbarrow across her legs, and manure and piss-soaked shavings burying her.

  “Son of a bitch.” Mia eyed him from the ground. “What are you laughing at?”

  Gil didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. “I told you to come get me when you needed to dump the wheelbarrow.”

  She propped herself on her elbows. Dirt stuck to the sweat on her bald head, and the flies were already dive-bombing her. “You going to help me up?”

  Gil dropped his manure fork. “Now you want my help.” He dragged the wheelbarrow off her legs and locked wrists with her and helped her up.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  “Yeah?” Gil retrieved his manure fork and started shoveling the mess back into the wheelbarrow. “You’re no golden ray of sunshine, either.”

  She grunted in acknowledgment as she brushed off her shirt and jeans, but she picked up her own fork and started shoveling. When the wheelbarrow was full, Gil got a running start up the dump trailer ramp and made it over the lip without slipping and dropping the whole thing on himself the way Mia had.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  How the hell could anyone put that much disdain behind one little word? “Hey.” He grabbed her by the arm and stopped her before she could disappear back into the barn. She shook him off but gave him her begrudging attention. “Give it a chance. The program, and the process.”

  Mia bowed up, daggers in her eyes. Even though the sharp look was aimed at him, it was the first real sign of life he’d seen since she’d shown up. “You have no idea the quantum shit I’ve been through—”

  “Try me,” Gil dared. “We can go tit for tat, see who’s had it worse. Better yet, I can go get Mac and Boomer. They’ll want to play along. Is your shit any worse than having to put a bullet in the head of the man you were involved with? Or losing a limb, or dangling from the end of a noose?”

  She didn’t say anything when he took a breath, but her expression had shifted from mule-ish to something more receptive. “When you stack everything up, compare shit pile to shit pile, you may find that yours doesn’t stink nearly as bad as you thought it did.”

  He leaned on the manure fork and lowered his voice. Losing his temper wouldn’t solve anything. “We’ve all been through our own wicked version of hell. We wouldn’t be at Healing Horses otherwise. So, don’t kid yourself. You’re not a special snowflake.”

  He tossed his fork in the empty wheelbarrow and pushed it back to the stalls. Mia followed, the tines of her manure fork scraping on the ground behind her. He couldn’t tell if she’d crawled deeper inside herself or if she was quietly considering what he’d said. Her perpetual scowl hadn’t shifted.

  Hopefully, he hadn’t royally fucked something up.

  He wasn’t an expert on any of this, but between his time in the Marines and his time with the ATF, he knew a little of what he was talking about. The peer-to-peer mentoring was a big part of Healing Horses.

  He left Mia’s wheelbarrow at the front of the stall across from his and went back to work.

  Mia stood against the open sliding door. “It won’t help.” She sounded lost, vulnerable…human.

  “Not if you don’t let it.”

  “I’ve been in programs before.”

  “This is different.” He didn’t understand how or why, just that it was the truth. “Don’t piss away the next ninety days. Do you know how many veterans are on Jenna’s list? The number of people who want to be here? Yet out of all of them, she chose you.”

  “I’m a number in a slot.”

  “Not here you’re not. As much as you try to hide, we see you, Mia Mann.”

  She blinked at him, turning a little green around the gills as if she’d eaten day old oyster that didn’t agree with her. Down the aisle, the landline rang in Jenna’s office.

  Before Mia could respond, if she was thinking of responding, Jenna popped her head into the aisle and said, “Hey, Brant. Phone.”

  “Yeah, coming.” Then to Mia, he said, “Give what I said some thought.” He turned to go, then stopped. “Oh, and leave those wheelbarrows for me, okay?”

  Something shifted on her face. She didn’t roll her eyes, but the tension around them eased, and one corner of her lips twitched, the beginnings of a smile or a snarl. Gil couldn’t be sure.

  Jenna left him to his call. He picked up the cordless. The converted office had a desk angled to give Jenna a good view out the open door, and a window overlooking a foaling stall. “Brant,” Gil said as he stepped to the counter along the back wall and washed his hands in the sink.

  “Good news,” Spinks said. “IA cleared you in the shooting, and I got your psych report. You passed.”

  Gil couldn’t tell if Spinks was pleased or pissed. �
�You sound surprised.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.” He’d been shrunk enough to know what the psychologists wanted to hear. If psych evaluations were an arcade game, he’d have his initials at the top of the leaderboard. “That all you called to tell me?”

  “No. Now that the fake news is out that Drew Ross died, he’s started talking. Plus, it didn’t hurt getting that deal from the prosecutor.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Gave up a guy by the name of Bradley Martin. New to the area, which might account for why we have this uptick in gun buys. Sounds like a big fish.”

  “But is he the big fish? Is he The Wolf?”

  “That’s for you to find out.”

  “I’m going in?” Gil waited for the tingle, the thrill that typically zipped through his body when he’d gotten calls like this before, but this time, all he felt was this weight in his belly and this sick, nagging feeling that maybe he shouldn’t have pulled his resignation.

  The resignation had been the right decision. He knew that for sure now. One more time. For Isaac.

  “You’re going in. First thing tomorrow. Meet me at the office at oh five hundred. I’ll give you the particulars then.”

  “Give me the big picture.”

  “Finn got you in as part of a security detail. Coincidentally, Martin had two openings on his security team. Finn’s informant is some kind of headhunter, like outsourcing for the criminal world. This is an upscale gig. Lose the hair and the beard and find yourself a suit.”

  Gil scrubbed at his beard and grimaced. He didn’t like the beard as much as he hated shaving.

  “We’re putting you in deep. We don’t know if Ross and his men were tipped off. Ross refused to say. If that’s the case, it could have been from someone in the sheriff’s department, or hell, even one of our own. Can’t wait until we’ve got our own god damn building. But I’m not risking you. You make something up on your end about why you have to leave your program. Finn and I and the informant will be the only ones who know you’re there.”