“Thanks for not shooting me.” It wasn’t a normal conversation starter, but it was the best Jericho had. He’d driven down the mountain, gone back to the sheriff’s station, signed out, gone home and gotten changed into jeans and a work shirt, all while trying to come up with a plan, trying to talk himself into doing the smart thing and telling Kayla what he’d seen, or maybe cutting out the middle man and going straight to the feds with the information. All that effort, and still he was there at the door of Nikki’s rented house, investigating on his own, and still he hadn’t thought of anything better to say when Nikki answered his knock at the door.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, staring him down.
“You couldn’t be bothered to warn me about the trip wire, though?”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I guess if you’d said something, I’d have recognized your voice. So, you didn’t want me dead, but you didn’t care enough to actually speak up and get yourself in trouble.”
“You can either start making sense or you can get the hell off my porch.”
She was a pretty good liar. She looked like she’d just stepped out of the shower, probably had been washing off the grime from her trip down the mountain; if he’d come over straightaway, maybe he’d have caught her riding the bike. But even if he had, it wouldn’t be proof of anything but her dedication to fitness and/or a green lifestyle. No, there was nothing here strong enough for an arrest, or for a search warrant. But Jericho knew he’d seen her on the mountain, and his instincts filled in all the other gaps. “Was it Eli’s Remington? If I’d kept coming up the path, would you have shot me with my own father’s shotgun?”
“Okay, you’re still talking crazy, so off you go. Come back when you make sense.”
“I won’t be coming back to pay next month’s rent, I can tell you that much. If you’re working with—with whoever, then you’re making your own money. The ride on the gravy train is over.”
She sneered at him, then scowled around herself in a display of disgust. “You think this shithole is ‘the gravy train’? Seriously? I have no idea what you’re talking about with all this shooting business, but as far as what you pay for goes? Paying one month’s rent on this dump doesnotgive you the right to make any kind of comment on what I do or how I make money. So, yeah. Off you go.”
“Who are you working for, Nikki? If you cooperate, I can try to keep you out of this. We can go after the bigger fish. But if a minnow is all we’ve got? I guess we’ll take it.”
“You assume I’m not a big fish? Why, because I’m a woman?”
That gave him pause, but only for a moment. “I assume you’re not a big fish because you’re living in this shithole,” he said. “The bastards who are behind all this? The ones pulling your strings? They’re living in mansions or penthouses off in the city. They’re not riding bikes down the side of a damn mountain and coming home to scrape together a meal for their kids in their two-bedroom shotgun shack.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Everybody starts somewhere.”
“Your ambition is admirable. Completely misplaced, but impressive other than that.”
“I looked up how much under-sheriffs make.” She said the job title like an insult. “It’s on the internet. And if you don’t pay my rent next month? It’ll be because you can’t fucking afford to, not on that salary. So don’t come by here trying to lord it over me with your big career success, ’cause I know better.”
It didn’t quite sting, but it hit home. Jericho was making half as much in Montana as he’d made in LA. He could have stayed in the city, gone on administrative leave while they investigated his shooting of the feds, and still been paid twice as much as he was making in Montana, even if he just sat around all day. Instead he’d put most of his stuff in storage, crammed the rest into his beat-up old Mustang, and driven halfway across the continent to live in a rental about half the size of the place he’d had in LA. And it wasn’t like he could claim he had great job satisfaction, either, not lately.
“So you’ve got a better plan?” He made it sound conciliatory. A conversation, not an interrogation.
But she just snorted. “Not a plan you’d be interested in.”
“Probably not.” He took half a step back. “Who’s going to look after the kids while you’re in jail? Have you got that sorted out? They didn’t seem to fit in too well with the foster family when you were in the hospital, but you haven’t got any family, do you? Have you got a plan for that?”
“Who says I’m going to jail?”
“I do.” He shrugged casually. “Maybe not right away. But eventually. I mean, we both know Eli did a couple stints. And that was okay for him, parenting-wise. For one of them, my mom was still alive, and for another I was old enough to take care of myself for a few months. Wade mentioned Eli’d been back in a few years ago, and maybe more times than that since I left? And all his buddies have been in too. Not a big deal for them. Because they weren’t single moms looking after two school-age kids. Be a bit of a problem for you, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Wade’snever been in jail,” she said smugly.
“Wade.” How did it always come back to Wade? “Is that who you’re working for? Damn it, Nikki.” But he wasn’t angry at her. Not really. He was angry at Wade. Why the hell had he dragged Nikki into this? Or, given her personality, why had he let her push her way in? Wade knew she had kids, knew she had ties to Jericho. “The information from the thumb drive,” he said, thinking out loud. “He said he needed someone to help him take advantage of all of it. Shit, Nikki, that’s dangerous stuff. How many people have died because of what was on that drive?”
“They died because of the videos, and he’s already given them up.” She shook her head in disgust. “I have no idea why, but he did. So there’s nothing dangerous anymore. Just good information.”
“Contacts, routes across the border—” Jericho tried to remember what else Wade had said was on the drive. “Drop points?” he guessed. “You got the location of that cabin off the thumb drive, and now you’re using it? Was the trip wire set up already, or did you and Wade come up with that?”
“Hey, guess what, Jericho?” She leaned in a little and overenunciated the words. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He’d tried. Sort of. And she’d given him enough to know what directions to look in, if not any real evidence. “I won’t take the kids long-term, but when you get arrested, give me a call and I can look out for them for a few days, until they find a better foster family.”
“Fuck you! I’m not getting arrested.”
“Yeah. That’s what all the people in prison used to think.” With that, he turned and started down the walkway.
