It was early fall, but the heat was still blistering. Two more days had passed, and I was still alive, my mother was still alive, and, I assumed, Ruth was okay. I hadn’t heard from Whit, and I hadn’t tried to contact her. I was half hoping her business had taken her back to Austin.

I couldn’t be that lucky.

I was screwing a piece of sheet metal into a brace when I heard a couple of the guys on the crew whistle like they’d seen a runway model. I turned just in time to see Whit cross the driveway, dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a long white blouse that was belted at the waist. I had to admit, it crossed my mind to whistle, too. She was an incredibly beautiful woman!

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I walked toward her, wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my shirt.

“I called your father’s office, and they said you’d be here.”

“You okay?”

“Fine. Just wondering why you haven’t been around.”

I glanced at the guys who were paying more attention to us than their work. I took her hand and drew her back away from the client’s driveway, moving between two of our company trucks that were parked at the curb.

“Things have gotten complicated. I can’t go to the Watering Hole anymore.”

“Why not? Your Daddy doesn’t approve?”

My eyes narrowed. “Please don’t push this, Whit.”

“Things were good between us. I think I deserve to know why you’ve suddenly stopped coming around.”

“Because I don’t want to get you into this trouble that’s brewing in this town.”

“What trouble? What have you gotten yourself into?”

“It’s more complicated than I can explain now.” I touched her face lightly. “You need to go back home.”

Hurt flashed in her eyes. “You’re trying to get rid of me?”

“No…”

She turned away. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to me.

“I don’t want you to leave, but I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“How am I going to get hurt? You don’t even come around anymore.”

I grunted. “Whit, you have to understand that I’m involved in a situation I can’t completely control. They’ve already—”

“What are you doing here? You couldn’t get the answers you wanted out of me, so you came looking for my son?”

Whit stiffened as my father approached us. His face was red, his eyes flashing with anger.

“I told you to stay away from me and mine! What part of that did you fail to understand?”

“Father, this is Whit Ellington, she’s—”

“I know who she is. She’s a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman!”

Whit’s eyes scraped over my face, her cheeks suddenly burning red.

“Is that true?”

She bit her bottom lip, and I suddenly saw the truth. Hadn’t she asked me about the Guardians from the first moment we’d met? Hadn’t she grilled me about Smythe and Sanders? Hadn’t she asked about Jack and what I knew about Harry Cravits?

Why had she asked those things?

Why hadn’t I wondered before?

“You’re a reporter?”

“Matthew, I—”

“Is that why you came over to me that first day? Is that why you’ve been coming around, asking all those questions?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? Haven’t you been asking me questions about the Guardians?”

“Of course she has,” my father said. “She’s working on a story about the Guardians and that shooting in Yuma.”

I tilted my head slightly, studying her face. Her eyes had fallen to the ground, an almost bashful stance. But I could see that her shoulders were still square, that the familiar defiance I’d seen in her since the day we met was building, that it was getting ready to explode.

“Was any of it true?”

Her head jerked back. “Yes! All of it!”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t, was it? The day you came to my house, looking for my father. That night at your motel…” A sense of betrayal flashed through me. “Were you just looking for answers then, too?”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“You just didn’t tell me the truth.”

She couldn’t deny that. I could see it in her eyes, could see it in the way she studied my face, but didn’t turn away.

“She’s a liar, son,” my father said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t believe a thing she says.”

“Matthew, you know me. You know that’s not true.”

“Do I? I hadn’t seen you in ten years until you came looking for answers. And wasn’t I in the perfect position to provide them to you?”

“That’s not what this was.”

“I think you should go, Whit.”

“Matthew—”

“Go!”

I turned from her, much to my father’s amusement. He was watching everything with this light in his eyes, like he’d finally seen in me what he’d been looking for since I was a small child, a fire that fit his idea of what a man should be.

I wanted to punch him.

I picked up a four-by-four and went back to work, not bothering to turn, to see if she’d followed my request. I didn’t fucking care. I had too much on my mind to worry about a woman who wasn’t honest with me.

A woman who’d been using me.

But ignoring her didn’t take the sharp edge of disappointment away. And that hurt more than anything else, I think.

 

 

I tossed and turned for hours, every second I’d spent with Whit playing itself out in my head, going all the way back to the first day of my junior year, when she’d boarded the bus and walked right to the seat I’d always occupied alone.

“This taken?”

“No, I don’t guess so.”

“I’m Whit. My mother gave me the name Whitney when I was an infant, but now that I’m old enough to make my own choices, I prefer to go by Whit.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

She’d always been defiant that way, acting so confident in herself even when she wasn’t. It was an instant connection that I’d made myself believe was restricted to those bus rides, but that I now knew went much deeper than that. At least, I wanted to believe it did.

But could I really believe anything she’d told me?

A part of me, the angry part, insisted that I couldn’t. But the rest of me? I knew her, just like she said I did. Ten years might have passed since those bus rides, but I still knew her. And I knew she wasn’t capable of those sorts of lies.

She might have wanted information from me, but it wasn’t all a trick. She wasn’t capable of that kind of manipulation. Not with me.

But I was still angry, still hurt that she hadn’t told me the truth. There’d been opportunities, and now that I could look back at it with 20/20 vision, I could see that she’d avoided telling me the truth. Had she been afraid she wouldn’t be able to get any more information from me if she told me the truth? Or was she afraid that I would stop seeing her and end whatever else it was that was happening between us?

I was afraid it was the former, but hoping with all my heart that it was the latter.

I rolled over, my back to the windows, still wrestling with my thoughts. As angry as I was with her, I was more scared for her safety than I’d been before. She was on Tucker’s radar. What if he went after her with his poison?

What if—

A crash sounded on the floor behind me. I jumped up, the sight of a man in dark clothing struggling to his feet just below my open window making me wish I had my service pistol in the nightstand. I was about to go after him with the only weapon I had, my fists, when he straightened and slid the hood of his jacket away from his face.

Jack Stone.

He made a gesture, telling me to be silent as he pulled a device out of his pocket and began walking slowly around the room. He gestured to the air vent above the bed, then at my phone. I had no clue what the thing in his hand was, but I thought I had an idea of what it was telling him.

He turned on the television, louder than I think my parents would have been comfortable with. It was good that their bedroom was sequestered on the other side of the house.

“You have bugs in here,” he said, sitting on the bed beside me. “No video, though.”

That was good to know.

“There’s a man sitting in a car down the street, too. I had to park half a mile away and sneak in through the alley. They never watch the alley for some reason.” He shook his head. “That’s always the first place I station someone.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We got your note.”

That was something of a relief. I gestured to the phone. “That, too?”

He nodded. “Probably in the living room and kitchen, too. They really don’t want you doing anything without them being aware of it.”

“You read my note. You know this is much worse than we’d suspected.”

“I knew they were planning something big, I just didn’t know how involved the Guardians were. I guess now we know.”

“The poison…it was awful.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“What about Ruth? Is she safe?”

“I’m sending her to Memphis on the first flight out in the morning.”

“Good. That’s good.”

His expression softened. “I won’t let anything happen to her. I promise you that.”

“My mother…?”

“That’s a little trickier. If you can convince your father to let her go, there’s room for her at my house in Memphis. And my brothers would be thrilled to keep an eye on her for us.”

“I appreciate that.”

“She’s family.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you got the note, you got everything else I sent you.”

“Yeah.” Jack tucked his little device into his pocket and leaned forward slightly, glancing at the television before focusing on me. “We’ve located the man Malaika identified through Truesdale’s journals. He’s a pastor with a nondenominational church in Portland, Oregon. Crispin’s on his way there to talk to him, but the more we look into him, the more it seems like someone stole his identity. That might be a dead end.”

“Portland?”

“Yeah.” Jack frowned slightly. “Why?”

“It’s probably nothing, but the computer tech Tucker’s got working for him is a theology student from Portland.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “A coincidence?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.” His frown returned. “But it seems unlikely. Do you know his name?”

“Just his first name. Leo.”

Jack nodded. “We can work with that. How many Leos could there be in a theology program in Portland?” He smoothed his hands over his legs. “We got word from my contact in the state’s attorney’s office that Tucker’s had someone contact them based on the websites you pointed out to them. That’s keeping them busy for the moment.”

“And the virus?”

“We’ve been able to explore their computer system. It looks like whoever runs it here is an amateur. He hasn’t done much to protect the system, and he’s not really getting into anything that might be suspicious. However, there is a remote access code that we think the person behind all this uses to keep tabs on his people. We’re waiting for him to make contact so that we can trace his location.”

“That sounds promising.”

“It is.” He tilted his head slightly. “We found information on mass killings in their system. Articles on shootings here in the States, some in foreign countries. Some articles on terrorism, but most of it deals with citizens who appear to have just snapped at some point, taking out as many people as they could before killing themselves.” He stopped, shivering slightly. “It’s deeply disturbing. The kind of stuff that, if I’d found it on a suspect’s computer when I was with the DEA, would have prompted us to act a hell of a lot faster than we might have otherwise.”

“Tucker explained it to me. They want to wipe nonbelievers from the country. Completely.”

Jack nodded. “It follows.” He sighed, running a hand over the top of his head. “Frightening, if you ask me.”

“We have to stop them.”

“We will.”

“We have to stop them now, Jack. He’s threatened my family, everyone I care about!”

“I know.” He touched my shoulder lightly. “We’re doing the best that we can. Right now, we have nothing we can go to the police with, but we’re working on it. We’re close.”

“What can I do?”

“Keep doing what you’re doing. Get information, and get it to us by whatever means necessary. The scanner is still operational. You could also go to the bank.” He handed me a key. “Malaika set up a safety deposit box. You can put things in there, notes or evidence, whatever you come across. Just…be careful.”

“Okay.”

“And texts. Your phone is compromised. They must have put a bug on it or something, but we can use code and text each other.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Memorize it and flush the paper. You wouldn’t want anyone to find it.”

“I will.”

He studied my face for a long moment. “We think we know what they’re planning, and we’re pretty sure we know when it’s going to happen. Even where, thanks to the plans you sent us. If worst comes to worst, we’ll arrange for the right people to be there when it goes down so that they can stop it before it goes too far.”

“And what if it’s the poison? What if they throw a big dinner, and no one knows what’s happening until people start to die?”

He looked away, clearly unsure. “I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

It wasn’t an answer that induced a lot of confidence.

Jack started to get up, done with his update.

“Can I ask a favor of you?” I said before I even knew I was going to ask.

“Anything.”

“There’s a girl. A reporter staying at a motel outside of town.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose again, his eyes darkening slightly. “That wouldn’t be the same reporter who’s been hanging around the offices trying to get information on Quentin and Malaika, would it?”

“Probably.” I ran my hands over my head, pressing my hair into my scalp. “She’s an old friend from high school. Whit Ellington.”

“Yeah?”

“Tucker had a run-in with her, and now he’s talking about getting rid of her. I’d really prefer if that didn’t happen.”

“Are you asking me to protect her?”

“Too ironic?”

Jack snickered a little under his breath. “Very ironic. I’ve been trying for weeks to convince her there’s no story here. I even had Crispin pay her a visit and ask her to leave town. But…” He studied my face for a long minute. “She’s important to you?”

I nodded despite myself. “She is.”

“Well, maybe we can use her. Maybe we can influence her story, put a few hot coals under the Guardians.”

“I would appreciate any help you could offer her.”

“Sure.” Jack slapped his hand against my shoulder. “Like I said, we’re family. I can move her, hide her from the Guardians until things blow over or she decides to go home.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep sending us information, and we’ll get this thing figured out before it blows up in everyone’s faces.”

“I’ll do my best.”

As I watched, Jack stepped out of the window, lowering himself to the uneven ground in the backyard. I walked to the window and watched him disappear through the back gate.

I wondered what Ruth would think if she knew that her husband had just snuck into my bedroom. Or that he was the first person to do it.

We really were dull people out here in Ellaville!