“And what if I point the finger at somebody, and it turns out I’m wrong?” Christine set her teacup on the table. “I’ll do everything I can to help you get that child back, but I won’t make accusations without solid evidence. Reputation is everything around here. People are going to know if someone is brought in for questioning, and it won’t matter if the guy turned out to be innocent.”
“Mommy, I heard voices.” Eva stood in the doorway holding her favorite stuffed bear.
Christine swooped Eva up in her arms. “Sweetie, you are supposed to be in bed.”
Eva pointed to Wyatt. “Who are you?”
“He’s just an … old friend who came to ask Mommy for help she can’t give.” She couldn’t prevent the steely look she gave him.
“What kind of help?”
Christine rubbed noses with Eva. “You ask too many questions.” Her attempt at being playful sounded hollow. Wyatt had her so stirred up she probably wasn’t going to sleep at all tonight. “I have to put my daughter back to bed.”
“Good, I’ll just see myself out.” His voice lacked the defensiveness she had expected. Instead, she picked up on something conciliatory in his tone.
“Come on, Eva.” She took her daughter’s hand and led her down the hallway. As Christine settled Eva beneath her yellow quilt, she heard the door open and close. She kissed Eva and touched her sweet nose with her finger. “Now, for the last time, my dear, go to bed.”
She closed the door to Eva’s room and returned to the kitchen. Wyatt had left the bag of frozen corn on the table. She rushed outside. He stood at the end of the stone walkway, holding a phone in his hand.
“You can take this if it helps the pain in your arm.” His soft response had caused her to regret her own irritation.
“Thanks, and it’ll give me something to eat later.”
She smiled at his joke. “I didn’t mean to be so reactionary to your request. It’s just that … this is where I belong now.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand.” The inflection in his voice seemed to communicate the exact opposite of what he said. He was hurt on a personal level by her reluctance to help.
“You helicoptered in, right? That was the lights we saw.”
He nodded. “We thought that would be quicker and less noticeable than a truck that nobody recognized.”
“So they are coming back for you?”
He waggled the phone. “Already got a rendezvous point established. Just got to hike out there.” Again, the tone of his voice betrayed him. She could detect the hurt underneath.
How easy it was to fall back into an old pattern.
Why did she even care about his feelings? She let out a sigh, crossed her arms against the spring cold and said, “I hope you are able to find the little boy … but I really don’t think he’s around here. There are other sheriffs in other counties. They may have seen something.” Again, she resented the position he had put her in. Still, the thought of the little boy separated from his mom pierced through her. “Of course, as the sheriff, I am obligated to cooperate … and I will if it is needed.”
Wyatt didn’t say anything, only pivoted and started jogging. As she listened to his footsteps fade in the distance, her emotions stirred up all over again. Only this time, she was upset with herself for the renewed intensity of attraction for a man she thought she would never see again.
TWO
Wyatt closed his Bible and massaged his chest where an intense ache had plagued him ever since he had left Christine’s. He had wanted to justify himself to her. To let her know that he was not the man she had dated ten years ago. But seeing the picture of Dustin with his arms wrapped around her had given him pause. She was a married woman. He questioned his motives in wanting her to view him in a different light … and knew he needed to back off.
His partner, Samuel Cranson, opened the motel-room door and stuck his head in. “Nice morning out there. Ready to go?” Samuel was almost twenty years Wyatt’s senior and close to retirement.
Wyatt tossed the Bible on top of his suitcase and rose to his feet after grabbing a wrap for his injured forearm. He didn’t have time to find a doctor. If he’d cracked a bone, it would mend on its own. “Let’s hope we get some kind of lead.”
The two men got into a battered pickup that had been purchased for them at a sheriff’s sale one county over. He doubted the pickup would fool anyone. In a town as small as Roosevelt, every stranger stood out like a sore thumb.
The plan had been made for Wyatt to try to probe Christine’s brain one more time while Samuel started questioning the law enforcement in neighboring counties. So much for easy in, easy out. Their investigation had just gone a little more aboveboard. Hopefully, though, no one would peg them as federal agents.
The safety of the little boy was not an issue. All the reports and even the ex-wife confirmed that Emmett doted on his son. Since it had been a point of contention in the divorce proceedings, Emmett’s desire to raise the little boy with the radical views had probably prompted him to take his son. The urgency came in finding the camp before the members found out they had been located and Emmett had a chance to find a new hiding place.
As they drove the few miles from the roadside motel into town, his thoughts returned to Christine. Ten years ago, he’d taken her for granted. He’d messed up. The better man had gotten her. Seeing her last night with her daughter was a cruel reminder of what he had missed out on.
Their breakup had been the start of his spiritual awakening and his decision to address his own issues. The wounds from his childhood ran deep and he was far from perfect. But with God’s help, he healed one day at a time.
Samuel lifted a finger off the steering wheel and pointed toward a squat brick building. “Sheriff’s office is over there.” He brought the truck to a stop. “I’ll call you in four or five hours, so we can update each other on our progress. Good luck.”
Wyatt got out of the truck and crossed the street. He entered the building where a dark-haired female deputy stood beside a file cabinet with an open drawer.
The deputy, whose name tag read Mitchell, studied Wyatt for a moment. “You’re the fed, right?”
Wyatt resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Despite their effort at blending in, something always gave them away. “Christine must have told you.”
Deputy Mitchell pulled a file. “Sheriff Norris said you might be stopping by and that I should help you as much as I could.”
At least that was encouraging. The deputy had been briefed, and Christine had laid out an expectation of cooperation. “Is Christine around?” He ran his hands through his dark hair.
“She has stepped out for a moment.” Mitchell opened the file and flipped through the loose pages. “She should be back shortly.”
“I’m right here.”
Wyatt whirled around to see Christine standing in the doorway. The hard line of her mouth and the narrowed eyes suggested that she wasn’t happy to see him. She must have known he wouldn’t give up easily or she wouldn’t have told the deputy about him.
Deputy Mitchell yanked her coat off the back of a chair and turned to Christine. “I’ve got a call about a fence dispute that has gotten ugly. If you want to hold down the fort, the two gentlemen have agreed to meet at the café across the street.”
“Sure, Lisa, that will be fine.” Christine took off her own coat and hung it on a rack as Lisa slipped out of the office. Her brown hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and she looked sharp in the sheriff’s uniform. She picked up the file Deputy Mitchell had pulled out of the cabinet. “No luck finding the camp from the helicopter?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Not yet. Night searches allow us to look for lights in remote places. But we need to limit those. Don’t want to raise suspicions. Emmett and Tyler’s pictures are in every field office and resident agency in the Northwest, so he won’t get far once he decides to surface. We think he’ll stay hidden as long as he can, but we don’t want to spook him.”
She sat down at her desk and clicked on her computer. “If you like, we can look at a map together. I might be able to give you some insight into where to look.”
“We can do that, but I—” Despite the difficult position he had put her in, she was trying to be helpful. “What I really need is for you to think about everything you have dealt with since you got elected. Maybe even something you noticed before you took office. Groups like this often start out benign and become radicalized because of one or two members. They might start off with vandalism of federal property or something like that.” He detected the same flash of agitation in her features he had seen last night.
“I did think about it. I have the same thing to tell you this morning that I told you last night. There has not been any crime that set off alarm bells for me as being symptomatic of a buildup to domestic terrorism.” She looked away from him and tapped on her keyboard. “You will recall that I was trained to know what to look for with that sort of thing.”
Tension filled the air between them. She didn’t like being pressed, but he needed answers. He stepped toward her desk. “One of Lansky’s emails we intercepted specifically mentioned Mohler County. Roosevelt is symbolic to these guys because of what happened here ten years ago, like Ruby Ridge and Waco were for Timothy McVeigh. I thought maybe if you had a night to sleep on it, something would come to mind.”
Christine flipped open the file. “I checked on what has been done to find Tyler Lansky. We never got a missing-child report. Was an AMBER Alert even issued?”
Christine had always been a competent investigator. Whatever her feelings were toward him, she was concerned about the kid. “His dad isn’t going to hurt him. Tyler has been used as a ping-pong ball in a contentious divorce, but there is no indication there’s been any abuse.”
“Infecting your kid with violent philosophies is psychological abuse. I want to find that boy as bad as you do, but I think you are looking in the wrong place.”
They weren’t looking in the wrong place. She couldn’t see past her loyalty to the townspeople. “I need some kind of lead. If you could just point me to a person who might know something.”
“I am not aware of any extremist element around here. Most of the families that were a part of the siege ten years ago left the county in shame. But no one in town has forgotten about that boy being shot. I doubt they would trust an agent enough to tell you anything.”
That truth hit him like a rock thrown against his chest. He couldn’t go forward in the investigation without her. “You have a relationship with these people. They will talk to you.”
Christine drew her mouth into a tight line. “I can give you full access to all our arrest records and reports.” She paced across the floor to the coffeepot.
All her movements had been jerky and nervous since she’d come into the office. Though she maintained a professional demeanor, he knew her well enough to know she was upset about him showing up here. But was her irritation about the way they were running the case or about what they had been to each other ten years ago?
“Both Deputy Mitchell and I will help you with surveillance, or if you just need directions to someplace, or—” Her voice faltered when she spilled coffee on her hand. She cupped her other hand over it.
Sympathy surged through him as he bolted across the room. “Did you burn yourself? Let me see.” He reached for her.
She twisted and pulled her hand out of reach. “It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it.” She looked up at him, eyes like granite. “I’m still only going to deal in hard evidence, and I’m still telling you that I have not seen anything that makes me believe there is any kind of group around that is a threat.” Her voice strained to the point of breaking. She turned her back to him.
He was beginning to think that he was the worst person to send on this assignment. There was an elephant in the room that was getting in the way of the investigation. All the hurt he had caused her ten years ago was rising up to the surface. The undercurrent of tension in her voice told him he had pushed hard enough. Regret washed through him over the man he used to be … for how he had treated her. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but withdrew. She was a married woman. He didn’t want her to misinterpret the gesture. He softened his tone. “Guess I’ll look at those records.”
“Good.” She turned back to face him and offered him an artificial smile. “If you like, I can set you up in the next room. I can pull all the reports for the last six months. You can read through them to your heart’s content.”
Though she was trying hard to sound cordial, the lines in her forehead revealed her anguish.
“I suppose that is a place to start,” he said.
She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “That’s where you access the most recent files.” She pointed. “If you go through that door, there’s a quiet room with a computer. You can work there.”
He had to be honest—no matter how hard he tried to dismiss it, who they had been to each other ten years ago was affecting how they related to each other now. “I’m sorry. I know this puts you in a difficult position.”
Christine’s tone softened. “It’s all right. We’re both just trying to do our job.”
Wyatt sat down at a wooden table that had a desktop computer on it. Except for a clock, the walls were bare. The only other furniture was a row of file cabinets.
Christine closed the door a few minutes after he sat down, but he could still hear her moving around and talking on the phone.
After three hours of reading, his only conclusion was that this was a place that didn’t have much crime. Mostly vandalism by teenagers and stolen farm equipment. But there was an illegal-weapons charge against a man named Angus Morrison that intrigued him.
Wyatt closed the window on the computer and rubbed his tired eyes. Considering that they thought this would be a two- or three-day assignment, this felt like a waste of time. He pushed his chair back, stood up and entered the main room.
Christine was gone, but the dark-haired deputy sat at her desk typing.
“Did you find anything that was helpful, Mr. Green?” She didn’t look up from her computer.
“Nothing that stands out. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed anything?”
“I can’t tell you anything more than Sheriff Norris did. She did ask me to offer to take you anywhere you needed to go or at least give you directions. It’s easy to get lost once you get out of town with no road signs.” She pushed her chair back and walked toward the coffeepot.
“That’s just the problem. Right now we are looking at thousands of acres of private and public land. We need a way to narrow down the possibilities. The best thing would be to ferret out someone who knows something and is ready to talk.”
Deputy Mitchell shrugged. “We’re not lying to you when we say we haven’t seen or heard anything. Are you sure you’re right about him coming up this way? Wouldn’t Lansky have come into town with his little boy if he’s here?”
“Not if he was being careful and didn’t want to risk being spotted.” He crossed his arms. “Emmett is not stupid. He knows we are looking for him. His plan is probably to lie low long enough for the intensity of the investigation to let up, then he’ll take his kid somewhere we can never find him. The window of opportunity for us to find Tyler is pretty narrow.”
After she poured herself a cup of coffee, Lisa sat back down in her chair. “That poor little boy. I do wish we could help.” She clutched her coffee cup and stared off into space.
Even the deputy seemed a little guarded around him. Maybe if he could tear down some walls, she’d be willing to prod her memory a little harder. He rocked back and forth, toe to heel. “So, a woman sheriff and a female deputy. That’s pretty forward thinking.”
Color rose up in Lisa’s cheeks as she sat her coffee cup down. “You mean since everyone in rural areas is backward thinking and behind the times.” The deputy stood up and faced Wyatt. Her tone was slightly confrontational. “We’re not as narrow-minded as you might think.”
Great, Wyatt. Open mouth, insert foot. His attempt at friendly conversation had had the opposite effect of what he had hoped. “I didn’t mean anything by my comment. I am sure you and Christine do a great job.” Did the young deputy know about the FBI disaster ten years ago? She couldn’t be more than in her early twenties. Maybe she was from around here and had been a kid when the whole thing had happened.
Deputy Mitchell maintained a stiff-shouldered stance. “Christine is a good officer. She got elected by a huge majority. With all her experience and training, we’re lucky to have her, and I know the extra income helps her out since Dustin died.”
A lump caught in Wyatt’s throat. Dustin was dead. As the shock spread through him, he struggled to keep his tone neutral. “Where did Christine go, anyway?” Confusion made it hard for him to think what he should do next. Christine wasn’t under obligation to give him an update on her life, but she’d had opportunity at the farmhouse to tell him and hadn’t.
“She went to drop some paperwork off over at the courthouse, and then she was going to the school for her daughter’s choir program.” Deputy Mitchell looked at the clock. “She should be headed up that way now. It’s just two blocks over and around the corner.”
The news about Dustin was like a tornado whirling through him. He managed a casual response. “Great, I’ll see if I can catch her.”
Christine buttoned her light coat against the spring chill. The morning had not been very productive. She kept staring at the door and wondering what Wyatt was doing. She hated herself for not being able to free herself from thoughts about him. She’d been young and naive when she’d first met him. How could he still have an emotional hold on her?
Despite being older and wiser, all the emotions that had kept her hanging on in a dead-end relationship ten years ago had coursed through her like a dam breaking the moment she’d seen him. The way she felt around him made her afraid of losing control. There’d been an opportunity to tell him about Dustin, but she had needed the safeguard of him thinking she was still a married woman.
Christine shoved her hands in her pockets as the high school came into view. The building that housed the lower grades and Eva’s kindergarten was just beyond that.
Maybe she was still feeling vulnerable. It had only been a year and a half since Dustin’s accident. Wyatt had probably had twenty girlfriends in the past ten years. The man was a rascal.
It would be easy enough to just let Deputy Mitchell assist him if he needed it. That would solve all her problems. Once Wyatt saw that the feds were looking in the wrong place, he’d be gone.
She heard footsteps behind her and glanced back. Wyatt ran to catch up with her. “Can’t this wait, Wyatt? I’m on my way to see Eva’s choir program.”
“I’ll walk with you. Just give me a minute.” He reached out and gripped her arm just above the elbow. He held her in his gaze like a laser locked on a target. He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it.
What was he struggling to say? He hadn’t let go of her arm, and even through the thickness of the coat, she felt herself responding to his touch and remembering what it was like to be held by him. She managed a businesslike tone. “So did you find anything in the files that was helpful?”
“One of your reports was about confiscating a shotgun with the barrel sawed off.”
His reading of the reports had been very thorough, but they didn’t give the full picture. “Angus is an old man. He didn’t even know that what he was doing was illegal.”
“It’s my only lead. Who else does he know? Who does he hang out with?”
“I had procedural obligation to file a report on Angus.” A lump formed in her throat. “The Bureau researches behavior from sunup until sundown. But if you truly know someone, you know if they are capable of a crime.” She planted her feet. “Don’t make me point the finger of guilt at that old man.”
Wyatt spoke in almost a whisper. “His activity looks suspicious. Buying weapons and altering them is suspect.”
“On paper, yes, but I know Angus. I know his heart. I know his history, and that counts for something around here.” She turned away from him. “I’m sorry it’s not the lead you were hoping for.”
A noise from the parking lot caused them both to turn. Christine saw a flash of red as Randy Stiller ran away from an older-model car. Randy had been in trouble more than once. Christine had promised Randy’s mother she’d keep an eye on him. What was he up to now? “Randy, hey.” The boy stopped and made eye contact. The guilty look on his face told her everything she needed to know. The kid was up to something. “Stop right there, Randy.” She stepped out into the parking lot and chased after him.
She’d gone ten paces when an explosive boom surrounded her. A force of wind and heat threw her backward. Debris flew around her. Metal clattered as her body impacted with hard concrete. Everything went dark.
THREE
Even before the last piece of metal clattered to the ground, Wyatt dived into the fiery aftermath of the car bomb. He inhaled thick smoke, coughing.
He registered the fire that shot out from what remained of the car and heard the cacophony of panicked voices around him. But all of the noise and mayhem was like a radio turned down low. All he could see, all he could think about was Christine. The blast had tossed her sideways and now she lay motionless, forty feet from the burning car.
She wasn’t moving. The percussive thrum of his heart beating in his ears blocked out all other sound as though he were in a tunnel that led directly to her. He ran. Feet pounding pavement. He dived to the ground beside her and felt for a pulse at her neck.
She was alive.
With his hand still cupping her cheek, he leaned closer. She looked so pale and lifeless. “Christine, can you hear me?”
No response.
Dear God, let her be okay.
He jerked back when he saw the blood soaking through the collar of her torn coat.
A hand squeezed his shoulder. “What can I do?” The voice was calm, authoritative.
He looked up into the eyes of an older man in a suit. “She needs medical attention now.”
“The hospital is just down that way.” The older man pointed. “I can call.”
“How far is it?” He could see the two-story white building with the blue symbol for hospital over the other buildings.
“Three blocks. One down, two to the west.”
“It would be faster if I took her.” He lifted Christine. She was like a rag doll in his arms. He turned, finally able to absorb what was going on around him. A crowd had formed on the sidewalk not far from the burning car. “Do you work here?”
“I’m the principal of the high school. Is Christine going to be okay?”
Wyatt didn’t stay around to answer the question. Holding Christine close to his chest, he ran across the lot toward the sidewalk. Without slowing his pace, he crossed the street, grateful that the hospital was clearly marked.
Christine moaned. She opened her eyes. Her gaze was unfocused.
Still running and out of breath, Wyatt looked down at her. He could lose her. So much had gone unsaid between them. “Just for the record—” he gasped for air “—I did love you. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
As quickly as she had opened them, her eyes closed. He was only yards from the hospital entrance.
A woman in a nurse’s smock and a man stood outside the door. When they saw Wyatt coming, they pushed a gurney toward him.
The nurse spoke. “Principal Slater phoned ahead. Put her on this, and we’ll get her inside.”
He laid Christine’s limp body down. The medical team pushed her through the doors where a third man had come outside to hold the doors. Wyatt stepped inside, prepared to follow the gurney down the hall.
