Bombay Runner

Chapter 1

Fort Smith, Montana

If you loved me, you’d let me have it.

She ignored him, staring through the binoculars at the tumbledown house. Nothing was moving. There hadn’t been movement in hours.

It would be a fine example of interagency cooperation, he argued. International goodwill, even.

Behind the field glasses, Sam Calvert rolled her eyes. He took another sip of awful coffee and continued to eye the white box on the seat between them. Six hours ago, it had been full. Now they were down to the last donut and Sam had dibs.

Okay. First of all, there’s nothing international about this, Calvert said, motioning generally about the unmarked cruiser. Second, where was the interagency cooperation when I was paying for those donuts? Third, and most importantly, what’s your wife think of your newfound amour?

He brushed a spot of powdered sugar off his uniform shirt while considering her points. The nametag over his right pocket identified him as Joseph Real Bird. A blue-and-orange patch branded him a Crow Tribal Police Officer.

"Well, Agent Calvert, Crow Nation is its own nation—says so right there in the name, so this is between nations. More or less. Further, I think I’ve been the model of cooperation in working with you to empty that donut box."

"And the love thing, Officer Real Bird?"

Ah, perhaps it’s more of a deep and abiding admiration.

Mm-hmm.

Which is fading with my growing hunger.

With a smile, she waved at him to take the last donut.

Fifty yards down the street, there was still nothing happening at their suspect’s house.

So, he mumbled around a mouthful, I been meaning to ask you something.

She didn’t say anything, just watched the house.

I been meaning to ask, well, why are you here?

Sam glanced over at him.

What?

Why are you out here? On the rez?

The Feds long ago took away tribal rights to prosecute anyone for felony crimes. Old news. You know that.

"No, I mean, why did the FBI send you? The rez is the dumping ground for people who are either on the way up or on the way down. New recruits, or burnouts and screw-ups."

Maybe that’s me.

You’re neither. So what gives?

Sam shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.

Well?

The Bureau has a certain way of doing things. I haven’t always adhered to that.

That’s it?

Pretty much.

So in other words, you did something big, but they didn’t like the way you did it.

Calvert shrugged, still watching the house.

What was it?

Doesn’t matter, Sam said. Her phone vibrated. She glanced at the number and then ignored it.

So what’s this guy’s deal? she asked, obviously looking to change the subject.

Real Bird considered the question for a moment.

He’s a rogue.

A rogue?

An unlicensed guide. Takes people down the Bighorn River. Some of the best fly fishing in the world. He doesn’t bother to get a license.

For that they want to put him in prison?

Well, the tribal Chair thinks he’s being disrespected.

You mean the government isn’t getting its cut of the guide fees?

That’s what I said.

Same with the buffalo?

Sort of. The Crow herd is one of the biggest around, near 2,000 head. Only the tribal government’s outfitter is allowed to sell free-range hunts, at three or four grand a trip. This guy decided to do one on his own. Nobody rendered unto Caesar.

What’s that verse? ‘The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.’

Doesn’t leave much for Caesar.

Apparently our guy thought so.

A black pick-up cruised past them, slowed near the target house, but pulled in across the street.

That’s the neighbor. She’s not involved, Real Bird announced into a handheld radio.

Sam’s phone rang again.

Clearly frustrated, she answered it.

"What? …

"Mom, I’m working. I can’t talk now ...

"No, it’s …

"He what? …

"Where? …

What are they doing about it?

Real Bird watched as she listened for another minute, then hung up.

Everything okay? he asked.

She didn’t seem to hear him.

Hey, Sam, you alright?

What? Yeah. I’m fine, she said.

Real Bird sat in silence as she stewed about something for a few minutes. Finally she broke the silence, Say, uh, could you and the other guys handle this? If I have to bug out?

Yeah, I guess. We can cover it. Just drop me at one of the other units.

Sure, she said, absently starting the car.

What happened?

Calvert put the cruiser in gear, moving in a daze.

Sam! What happened?

It’s my brother. In Afghanistan. He’s missing.

Chapter 2

The automatic doors swished open and a blast of muggy, stifling air rolled in from the darkness and washed over Sam.

Dropping her bag on the sidewalk, Calvert tugged her jacket off, studiously ignoring passersby who stared at the pistol on her hip. Gathering her dark hair, she tied it up into a ponytail as best she could. Anything to get it off her neck.

Two minutes here and already her shirt was sticking to her back.

Welcome to Virginia, she thought. Nothing like Tidewater in the summertime.

Grabbing the jacket, Sam shouldered her bag and scanned the curbside traffic. Another thirty minutes and they’d be rolling up the sidewalks for the night. For now though, the terminal was caught in a last frantic burst of activity. The day’s final shuttle from D.C. had just come in, a group of sailors and Marines was returning from deployment, and a gaggle of clueless vacationers milled about.

In the traffic off to the left, someone laid on a car horn as a cherry-red Mini Cooper swerved through the sluggish flow. A skycap jumped out of the way and a cut-off taxi driver let fly a blistering string of obscenities. The Mini driver threw a half-apologetic, beauty-queen wave to her wake and screeched to a halt in the general vicinity of the curb.

Ignoring a growing chorus of horns, the woman stepped one leg out of the car and looked across the roof. Hey girl, how you holding up?

Calvert gave a rueful smile. Alissa was an analyst in the Bureau’s regional field office and before the transfer to Montana they’d worked closely together. More importantly, she was a dear friend.

I’ll live, Sam said. But things aren’t getting better.

So, no news?

No. Nothing. I just ... I don’t know if we’re going to find him, she said, trying not to tear up.

Hey, hey, I don’t want to hear that, Alissa scolded, settling back into the overgrown go-cart. Things will work out. You and I are snoofin’ it now.

Climbing into the passenger seat, Sam choked out a half-laugh in spite of her tears. Alissa came to the States as a teen after the Taliban butchered her parents. She’d been zealously learning English—in equal parts obscure Oxford Dictionary and random hipster slang—ever since.

What the heck is snoofing?

Alissa slammed the car into gear and roared away from the curb.

Snoofing is how you look for a wi-fi network and capture packets that—you know what? Nevermind. In this context, grandma, it means you and I are on the case.

She glanced in the mirror then swerved in front of an air cargo truck lumbering toward the airport exit.

So, you learn anything in D.C.?

Alissa, I swear I visited every stinking agency in that town and called in every favor I own. Nobody knows anything, nobody’s saying anything, nobody’s doing anything. They just don’t care. If it’s not about their budget or their image, then it’s somebody else’s problem. Defense says go see State, State says the Bureau, they say Justice ... it’s one big game of hot potato.

But your brother’s missing, you’re a special agent, surely the Bureau ...

... the Bureau says I’m ‘too close to the matter’ and ‘not viewing things objectively.’ There’s been no ransom demand, he’s only been missing 24 hours, it would be ‘precipitous to take action at this juncture,’ blah, blah, blah. And don’t call me Shirley.

Alissa forced a token smile at the tired joke. She raced around an onramp and then opened up the little car on the interstate.

Ah, are we not going to your place? Sam asked. I mean, you want to put me up at the Crowne Plaza that’s okay ...

Not a chance. Before we sack out though, we’ve got to take a little mesonoxian trip to the office.

Sam pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, then finally gave in. Mayzonox-what?

Mesonoxian. ‘Of or relating to midnight.’ We’re making an after-hours visit to the field office. You haven’t been using that word of the day calendar I bought, have you?

Ah, gee, you know, that thing had a horrific industrial accident shortly after it arrived. Total loss. Terrible shame.

Alissa sniffed her displeasure as she took an exit far over the posted speed, departing the beltway and heading toward the state line.

I thought we were going to the office.

"We are. The new Norfolk Field Office."

But ... if we’re headed south, then that’s away from Norfolk.

Duh. The Norfolk office isn’t in Norfolk, Alissa said, like that should be patently obvious. Slamming on the brakes, she generously applied the horn to a slow-mover in the passing lane. Anyway, you haven’t seen the new place yet ...

... obviously ...

... but it rocks. Twice as big as the old digs. Fifty million bones worth of gleaming office park steel and glass. More importantly, super high-tech wizardry.

Okay. I guess.

Trust me, you’ll love it, especially what I have to show you. Now, before we get there and it’s all work, work, work, tell me every scandalous detail of your romantic life, girl.

There’s nothing to tell. We’re not having this conversation.

Come on.

Nope.

Alissa thought about pouting for a moment but apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Well then let me tell you about mine.

Please don’t.

Okay, so I don’t know what I was thinking, but last night I agreed to this blind date. Well I show up and I’m like, ‘Eeew, he’s old!’ I mean, we’re talking coulda been a waiter at the Last Supper old.

Really don’t need to hear this.

But he’s also like super hot, so I figure, ‘Why not?’ So I make the mistake of trying to have an actual conversation with him. Dumb. Like dumb as a bag of rocks dumb. Just sitting next to him I’m losing IQ points faster than a day laborer at a Chinese glue factory. So ...

Sam closed her eyes and tried to tune out her friend’s drama. No news. Twenty-four hours gone. What if we can’t find him?

Chapter 3

Sam did a small turn about the lobby of the field office, trying to take it all in. You guys are doing alright. Where’s the espresso bar?

Down that way, smart aleck, but we’ve got things to do. Come on.

They wound their way through a couple of darkened office bays, then the analyst flipped on a series of overhead lights and plopped down at a terminal. Using her foot to push a spare chair toward Calvert, she began to log in.

What’s this? Sam teased. Where’s the giant display table that you wave your hands over, throwing images and video clips to random wall screens?

Alissa gave her a look, unamused.

"I mean, this is where you announce that we found a piece of cat dandruff near our ‘vic,’ and from that you did a spectral analysis and accessed some satellite databases and determined that our ‘perp’ is the neighbor’s third cousin and he’s currently at such-and-such address. Right?"

You are so not funny. Worse, you’ve been watching way too many stupid TV crime shows. That’s not what analysts do.

Okay. All kidding aside, why are we here?

Alissa sat up straighter, bracing herself for an unpleasant subject. Look, we need help. I mean, you and I can do a lot. A whole lot. But who knows when the bureaucracy will get out of its own way; the two-bit charity your brother was working for isn’t going to rescue him; and there’s no way it had kidnap and recovery insurance. We need help from somewhere.

She let that sink in for a moment.

Getting no objection, she added, We’ve got to ask.

Ask who? Sam asked suspiciously.

Whom. And you know who.

Gault?

Yes.

No, Sam said, pushing the chair back and standing up. No way.

Girl, your brother is missing halfway around the world. We’ve got few contacts there, fewer resources, and the powers-that-be are going to try to keep us out of it. Your, um, friend knows the ‘stan, inside and out.

No.

Look, not only was he a spook—somebody who finds info and people that others don’t want found—but he was mixed up in all that direct-action, black ops tough-guy stuff.

Calvert paced in a circle, arms crossed over her chest, obviously rejecting what she was hearing. She stared at the floor, shaking her head.

Alissa pressed on. We have to ask him. Who else is going to help us, someone who has all the right skills, the ones we’re definitely gonna need? Plus he knows all those private security people.

Even if we did ask, why in the world would he say yes?

To rescue a helpless citizen. To help a fellow veteran. Maybe because he’s bored. I don’t know. But I do know this: If you ask him, he’ll do it. I mean, look at you, even with no sleep and sick with worry, you’re gorgeous. It’s disgusting. How’s he going to say no to that?

Sam didn’t say anything; she just took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

Not to mention the most obvious reason. Despite whatever you say, I think you guys are still in love.

No!

Alissa laughed. Yeah, I can see there’s no way. I mean, he’s smart, funny, tall, handsome, ripped—who would like that? Not to mention the fact that he’s loaded.

It’s drug money, Sam countered, just to dispute something.

Yeah, taken from the Taliban so they wouldn’t use it. Besides that spy-agency guy told him to keep it.

"Oh, well that makes it okay."

Look, I don’t know what’s ‘okay,’ but I do know this: When you guys were together, off on your little island somewhere, you were happy. Really happy.

Well yeah, who wouldn’t enjoy that? Hanging around the beach all day, diving, swimming, exploring the isle. Ordering room service and falling asleep to the sound of the waves under the hut. Waking to sunrise on the lagoon. It’s like living in a freakin’ screensaver, for Pete’s sake.

So what’s the problem?

"It isn’t real. You can’t just run off to an island. What about your friends, your family? Without a life, without roots, you’re a ... a ... vagrant. The money and the room service and the scenery can take your mind off it, but you’re still just a vagrant. Besides, the problem—the fatal problem—is that I’m an FBI agent and he’s a wanted fugitive. In what universe is that ever going to work?"

She sat down again and looked at her friend. We can’t ask him. I can’t. He and I are over, okay? It’s not fair to him and ... to be honest, it hurts too much.

Alissa rubbed her face with both hands and buried an exasperated grunt in her palms.

Sam, I realize you hate asking for help. From anybody. For anything. But you know the statistics on abductions. Every passing hour makes it less likely he’ll come back alive. We need Gault’s help.

I can’t.

Even if it means never seeing your brother again?

Calvert thought about it for a minute, then another. Finally she seemed to deflate a little.

Okay, she mumbled.

What?

I said okay. If I get a chance, I’ll ask him.

Yes, at last! You are such a mumpsimus, I swear.

Seeing Sam’s expression, she quickly added, Such a stubborn person who obstinately sticks to an idea long after it’s been proven obviously wrong. Now, was that so painful?

Not really. Because I’ll never have the chance anyway.

What do you mean?

I mean, I have no way to get in touch with him. It didn’t seem fair to give him hope that I would and, if I did have a way, I’d always be tempted. So I said goodbye and walked away.

Oh, is that all? Well, girl, you don’t need to have his digits in your celly to find him. You got me.

Alissa, you don’t understand, he’s off the grid, disappeared.

Ah, come on. I catch clowns who think they’re ‘off the grid’ every week. Nobody’s unplugged nowadays.

No, I’m not talking about some knucklehead insurance cheat or organized crime deadbeat. He’s a professional. This guy is vapor. Nothingness wrapped in a void inside a black hole. Everything is shell corporations and offshore accounts five layers deep. Cash transactions and disposable cell phones and all these paranoid techno hacks. You’re never going to track him.

A Cheshire grin spread across Alissa’s face.

I never said we’d track him. I said we’d find him. It’s simple particle physics theory.

It’s ... what?

How’d they prove Higgs field exists? Not by trying to measure the field itself. No! They proved the field by measuring the energy left by a Higgs bosun moving in it!

Sam shook her head as if to clear it. Sometimes Alissa was too smart for her own good. Okay, you’re speaking nerd again. I have no idea what you mean.

I mean we don’t have to track Gault. Let him be Mr. Invisible Man. We follow the trail left by someone close to him. What was his friend’s name? The burly guy with the shaggy blond hair and the broken nose?

Outlaw?

Not his call sign, his real name.

Joe Younger.

"Right. He’s all we need. And, now you can watch what a real analyst does, milady. So tell me, what do you know about alper?"

Chapter 4

ALPR? You mean like the license plate thing?

Exactly like that. Tell me what you remember.

What am I, a fifth grader on pop-quiz day?

No. But I have to know what you know so I can figure out how much to explain. Start at the beginning.

This is ridiculous, Sam muttered under her breath. Okay. A cop car pretty much used to mean Barney Fife in grandpa’s sedan with a revolver and a bubblegum light on the roof. Then the digital revolution came along, Homeland Security was born, and the resulting tidal wave of cash accelerated the paramilitarization of law enforcement.

Oooh, you sound like a college professor.

Don’t be a bitch.

Ouch! Kitty’s got claws. Continue, please.

So truckloads of money pour in and today any given cruiser rolling off the assembly line is a supercar loaded down with all this ultrawhamodyne tech that would make James Bond green with envy.

Actually, I think it would be Robocop, but ...

... but, they’ve got forward looking infrared night vision, voice-activated controls, ink-free fingerprint scanners, onboard computer terminals, automated multi-camera systems—all kinds of stuff. Automated License Plate Recognition, or ALPR, was added when some smart-guy brainiac figured out how to make all those onboard cameras read license plates.

Do you know how? Alissa asked.

What?

How that happened.

No. Why do I care?

Enrich your mind. Broaden your horizons. Do better at trivia games. How it happened was that those crazy high-speed mail-sorting machines at the post office use cameras and optical character recognition software to read the zip code of each letter and shoot it off in the right direction. Some brainiac, as you put it, figured out you could use the same idea to read license plate numbers off cars.

I still don’t care, Sam said.

I swear you’re gonna give me trichotillomania.

As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, most cars have six or eight cameras, and all day long, wherever they go, they scan every license plate that passes through their field of vision, using both standard and infrared. Nine, ten thousand a shift. Through bad weather. At up to 130 MPH difference in speed. ALPR compares each number to a locally stored listing of plates of interest—stolen cars, Amber alerts, known felons, and so on. If there’s a hit, the officer is alerted.

And?

And what? That’s it. An arrest is made, I guess.

Okay, that’s actually a pretty good description, as far as it goes, the analyst said.

Gee, thanks. What do you mean ‘as far as it goes’?

"Well, first, ALPR proved so useful that having it on cruisers wasn’t enough. Jurisdictions started mounting stationary cameras on telephone poles and overpasses. So you’ve got more and more ALPR units being installed.

"Second, ALPR systems were developed that had the capacity to record an image of each car, tagging it with the GPS location, time and date. And they gather this info on every car, not just the ones that generate a hit. So you’ve got more detailed data, and more of it, being collected by each ALPR.

Third, and most importantly, high-speed wireless came along. Now the same invaluable tech that lets your smartphone stream internet videos of dangling cats or skateboarders crushing their junk lets all of the ALPR systems be continuously linked with headquarters.

Alissa reached into a mini-fridge parked nearby and grabbed an energy drink. She talked her guest into a bottle of tea.

Okay, Sam said, So the station house can remotely update the watch lists and monitor the hits. That’s nice, but how does it help us?

Well, the boys down at the precinct don’t just observe and supervise. Their equipment records every ALPR record that comes down the pipe, not just the hits on wanted vehicles, not just the people suspected of criminal activity. Over time, a given database accumulates millions of data points. And what does every law enforcement agency do with data?

They work out sharing agreements and joint databases; they feed fusion centers and task forces; and then they pass it to us, Calvert said, smiling.

Right. So now it’s not about helping the beat cop spot a stolen car he passes. It’s about creating a searchable database of historical vehicle location data, a tracking tool enabling retroactive surveillance of millions of people—all without warrants or judicial oversight.

Sam leaned back, considering the implications of this.

We’re talking about a database of people’s movements, Alissa said, Worse still, their presence at locations—who attended a political event, who visited a medical clinic, who went to addiction treatment or attended a given house of religion.

People who haven’t done anything wrong don’t have anything to worry about, Sam argued.

Yeah, that’s always the refrain. But I know what it’s like to live under a government that decides to persecute some of its citizens for their religion, their sex, their political beliefs. My parents were murdered by people who decided that the government, the ruling theocracy, knew better than anyone else. These databases scare the crap out of me. They ought to scare the crap out of every American.

But ... it’s your system.

"It’s not mine. I’ve argued long and hard about how wrong it is, but as the Special Agent in Charge of our office keeps reminding me, I’m not being paid for my opinions."

Sam smiled. Thinking about her own exile to Montana, she said, Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still working here, Alissa.

I’m one of three Afghan-born employees in the entire Bureau. The only female. I could break into the Hoover Building at high noon and take a steaming dump on the Director’s desk and they wouldn’t do anything to me.

That’s a nice image.

Glad to help out.

The two sat in silence for a moment.

So, this database system, it’s really live and online and operating now?

Well maybe not in Montana, since you all have more cows than cameras. But there’s some version of it in most places, yeah.

It’s running here, though. And you have access to it?

Yep.

So you can run Joe Younger’s plate?

I can. Actually, I already did.

Chapter 5

The desk Alissa was using had three monitors surrounding a single keyboard. She quickly moved through several screens, then opened some kind of graph to her left and a long spreadsheet on the right. In the center, a map of the region was littered with color-coded dots.

Typing rapidly, she said, This is kind of a different way to use the system because we don’t really care about finding Younger himself. We just want to observe his movements to see if we can deduce where his friend might be holed up.

Assuming Gault hasn’t moved on from Virginia, that he’s staying in one place, that Outlaw visits him there ...

Yeah, I got it, Samantha Sourpuss, there’s a few ifs involved. Like I was starting to say, we begin by filtering out hits that are at Younger’s home or work, or on the route between them.

A large number of the glowing dots disappeared.

Same for his favorite restaurants, this bar he likes down at the oceanfront—which is a dump, by the way—his favorite place to go mountain biking, the ...

Wait, wait, wait. How can you tell something like that?

Alissa half turned and gave her friend a superior look.

The mountain biking? Well, in the past year, his SUV has been imaged twice when it was parked down at First Landing State Park, both times on a Sunday afternoon. There are three other Sunday afternoon hits between his house and that park, each of which looks something like this.

She clicked on one of the dots and a date-stamped photograph opened, showing the Explorer with a mountain bike strapped on the roof.

Now maybe the roof rack is for show and he’s going there to do interpretive dance in a meadow full of wildflowers, but my money’s on biking.

Like I told you, Sam said, I knew we nailed that mountain bike call. So, once we filter out all the outliers and the easily identified destinations, what’s left?

Alissa smiled. Turning back to the computer, she entered some new parameters and the vast majority of the dots disappeared off the map.

We’ve got four clusters or patterns of activity that don’t have an obvious explanation.

I like it.

Calvert studied the map for a moment.

But all this really tells us is that he does something down a certain road, or in a specific neighborhood, with some frequency. Without a definite address to check out, you’re still talking about pretty big areas to canvass.

The analyst nodded.

It’s more than we had a minute ago, Sam admitted, But even if we had a couple of full-blown teams, covering an area would take days, not hours. And we have four. Areas, not teams.

You don’t need teams, boo-boo, ya got me. Remember how I said high-speed wireless allowed for continuous live links back to the station?

Yes.

Well that data pipe is not just for the ALPR data—the cruiser’s whole computer network is linked back to the precinct, including all six or eight or however many cameras. That way, the brass can provide real-time input and direction on stops, arrests, pursuits.

Oh, that sounds like the dream scenario of every front-line officer.

I know, right? Anyway, the thing is, more and more departments are saving that video, as potential trial evidence, to document things in case of harassment or abuse claims, for worker’s comp cases, whatever.

So ... Outlaw got pulled over?

No, actually he must be a pretty good driver. I didn’t come up with any recent stops or citations. But I wasn’t looking for video of him.

Sam looked confused.

I don’t get it. How does this help us?

Have you heard of Google’s Street View project?

That’s where they’re sending the camera trucks around, right?

Yes. They plan to send a truck down every street in the world taking pictures. The idea is you can explore it all on-line without ever having to leave your mom’s basement, Alissa said.

Okay.

Thing is, with all those trucks driving around taking pictures, they’ve captured some ... unexpected things—people committing crimes, gettin’ their freak on, sunbathing topless, sunbathing bottomless. There’s even one well-known photo where one of those radar speed signs shows the Street View truck was speeding.

Nice.

Isn’t it? Well, now imagine that it is eight cameras on the vehicle; they’re video cameras vice still; and it’s not one-and-done on a street. They’re filming there over and over, from different positions, at all kinds of crazy hours.

Sam began to smile. They’d catch a lot, she said.

They certainly would, Alissa agreed.

She turned back to the keyboard and launched a video clip. It was a view over the right front fender of a patrol car. A minivan could be seen moving on the road ahead, blue lights reflecting off its rear window.

The interesting part, however, was the other way, off to the side of the cruiser. A brick colonial farmhouse could be seen, and in the driveway a beat-up Explorer that looked awfully familiar to Sam.

Is that ...?

Younger’s truck? I think so. There is never a clear view of the license plate. That’s why there was no ALPR record. But it’s the right make, model and year, and that dent on the quarter panel is pretty distinctive.

How the heck did you find this?

I took the ALPR records of interest and pulled all the video clips that were within an hour or two of them, and on the same road or in the same neighborhood.

But when did you do all this? I only called you yesterday.

Didn’t I tell you to get ready to see what real analysts do?

She killed the last of the energy drink and immediately popped open another.

Besides, explaining some of this stuff takes longer than doing it. The ALPR search, for example.

Alissa zoomed the map in on a cluster of dots to the south, not too far from the Carolina state line.

Sam turned her head slightly sideways and squinted a little to read the small print.

Bunch of Walnuts Road? Are you serious?

Yeah. Dates back before the Civil War. There was a farm or plantation down there named ...

... Bunch of Walnuts?

You got it.

Alissa moved the picture in closer, the satellite view now showing the farmhouse from the video. A brick barn with a metal roof was out back, along with several smaller outbuildings.

She looked at Sam with a self-satisfied expression.

So whadda you think?

I don’t know. It kinda feels like there’s some cat dandruff in there somewhere. But it’s promising. If he’s there it’ll progress to full-on amazing. You ready to go see?

Whoa there. If this guy’s as dangerous as you say, we don’t want to be going up on him in the middle of the night.

I guess, Sam said, obviously impatient to be moving now that they had a clear goal. I just don’t want to miss a chance, though.

No worries, Alissa replied, now even smugger. I’ve had a surveillance team down there since before we left the airport.

Chapter 6

Sam finished the last of her breakfast burrito and took a big drink of orange juice.  Beside her, Alissa was piloting the Mini.  The sun had been up for ten minutes or so and they were headed south for the farmhouse.

Last night, they’d gone back to