He shook his head, hard. “I didn’t see it. He just walked off.”
Mack shifted on his chair and grimaced, likely from the toll the long plane ride had taken on his painful leg. “And did hewarn you about what would happen if you didn’t drive the car to the right location?”
“Yeah. Said there was a GPS tracker on the car, and he would be following my every move. He said I couldn’t even go home to tell my wife that I was leaving.” He shook his head again. “I wish I had. She would’ve talked me out of doing this. She’s the reason I stopped wasting my life. Turned me right around.”
Addy resisted shaking her head over the man’s lack of street smarts. For a guy who had a juvie sheet, he had to know Dante couldn’t be trusted. But Pena was desperate, and desperate people did desperate things. Addy had seen that often enough. And she’d seen men like Zamora take advantage of people in these positions. It never ended well for the pawn, but the knight got richer and richer and lived in a big castle on the hill.
Addy couldn’t sleep and padded to the kitchenette in the hotel suite she shared with Mack. The only light in the room came from a nightlight casting deep shadows around the space, and she didn’t turn on another one for fear of waking Mack.
Four a.m. and he and the town were silent, but she was wide awake. She needed to pass a few hours until they could go to the bodega. By the time they’d left the jail, the shop was closed, so they’d gotten a hotel suite for the night. On the way to check in, they’d stopped at a grocery store to buy a few essentials.
She dug through the paper bag until she located a single-serve pack of Cheerios. She pulled out the files on the three men with sovereign-citizen connections, sat at the hotel room’s small table, and opened the pack to start nibbling on the cereal while she looked through the folder again.
Her thoughts drifted to Pena and his wife. He’d made one stupid mistake and now his entire life was destroyed. The samething had happened to her and Mack, she guessed. Mack hurt her one time only, couldn’t live with it so he walked out, altering their lives forever.
The difference was that they could still change their consequences. Pena couldn’t.
She sighed and scooped out some Cheerios. She munched on them, her mind clouded, her emotions raw. She so desperately wanted to remember Mack. Even just a tiny bit so she knew her emerging feelings were real and that she did actually love the man. It was easy to see why she might. He’d proven himself to be honorable and dependable. Kind and yet strong at the same time. Loyal and trustworthy. Everything she could hope for in a husband.
And she was also physically attracted to him. What woman wouldn’t be? She hadn’t asked him if he’d dated since they’d broken up. If her memory was right, she hadn’t gone on any dates. At least she didn’t remember a guy in her life. Which told her she either hadn’t had the time, what with work and caring for her mother, or she was still in love with Mack and didn’t care to date another man.
Another sigh whispered out in the silence, and she shook her head. She had to get control of these emotions so she could focus on the investigation. She had to be clearheaded and ready to go in the morning. Especially now that they knew the names of three men who might be buying the guns and would likely be targeting federal employees.
None of the three showed any means of employment, and all of them lived on compounds in rural Oregon. Joshua Ross had a wife and ten children. So how was he feeding all those kids? The scam? Likely. Randy Turner was married too but had no children. And Eric Woods, the youngest of the three, was single.
Cam had located an online connection to all three men on an imageboard called8run, which was composed of user-createdmessage boards. The board had been linked to many right-wing movements, racism and anti-Semitism, plus hate crimes, mass shootings, and child pornography. Though shut down many times, it continued to resurface elsewhere, most recently as a Russian-hosted site on the dark web. Cam didn’t find any information about the guns or Razo, but he was looking into the users for possible screen names and monitoring the site for any new posts.
A sound came from Mack’s room. Groaning, she thought. She went to his door and listened. Sounded like he was having a bad dream. Maybe a nightmare.
Should she knock on the door? See if he was all right?
It really wasn’t her place to do something like that anymore. She continued to listen and heard footsteps, then water running. Okay, he was in the bathroom and didn’t need her intervention.
She went back to the table and her Cheerios. His door soon opened, and he stepped out, dressed in athletic shorts and a T-shirt. He limped toward her, but the moment he caught sight of her, his limp disappeared. He still didn’t want her to know how badly his leg hurt. She looked at the bandage on his calf, then ran her gaze up his torso. He really was a fine-looking and fit man. Handsome, even with his tousled hair. But it was the man she was coming to know that she was really attracted to.
She caught herself staring and blinked a few times. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He shook his head. “You either, I see.”
“Yeah. Kept thinking about Pena and how he ruined his life with one choice.”
Mack went to the kitchenette. “You were always the softie in the group.”
“You mean the RED team?”
He nodded and started a cup of coffee brewing.
“I wish I could remember everyone,” she said. “They seem like great people.”
He turned and leaned against the counter. “They are, and you got along very well with everyone. Even Eisenhower.”
“Is he a good boss?”
“The best.” Mack’s expression brightened. “He might be controlling at times, but he also gives us free rein in many ways. Allows us to do our jobs our way.”
“With our personal connection, I’m surprised he let you take lead on this investigation.”
Mack frowned. “He had to know I wasn’t walking away from you at a time like this and would ramrod the others anyway. So why not let me lead?”
