Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(81)

I nodded.

He cleared his throat, got in, and started the truck. Clyde came running back. I placed a hand on my partner’s head, and we watched until the taillights of Sarge’s pickup disappeared in the distance.

Then I returned to my laptop and got to work, searching for a trigger.



Half an hour later, the sun had spread a red-gold fan across the picnic table. Clyde took a post-breakfast snooze at my feet. He opened one eye and thumped his tail when Dougie came out of the room carrying two cardboard cups of instant oatmeal and more protein bars.

“You let me sleep,” Dougie said.

“You needed it.”

He handed me one of the cups and a spoon, then sat across from me, his hair falling in untidy waves around a face still creased from sleep.

“I’ve been working.” My knee jittered up and down.

Dougie’s eyes went from my bouncing leg to my face. “What did you find?”

I pushed up from the table, unable to sit still. “I was looking for leverage to use against Osborne.”

Dougie lifted the lid on his oatmeal. A cloud of steam rose into the air with the scent of maple. “Tell me.”

I turned the computer around to show him the DMV photos of the people standing on the platform. “These five people were almost the last thing Kane saw before he died. He was handling a belligerent man who turned out to be his killer. But his last act was to turn his back to this man and zero in on one of these five people.”

Dougie pulled the computer toward him, frowning. “Go on.”

“I eliminated Martinez, Parker, and Wilson. There’s nothing special about them other than their presence on that platform.”

“Okay.”

“I also eliminated Kenneth Napierkowski.” Talking fast, I explained. “Neither he nor the fifth person, Laura Almasi, have any social-media presence. Rare these days, but not unheard of. Plus, Napierkowski lives in the Golden Triangle, which means he’s wealthy, even though I can’t find a job history for him. That’s potentially suspect. But he isn’t military. And as near as I can tell, he’s never left the country. He’s overweight and serves as president of an African Violet Society. He doesn’t fit the profile.”

Dougie nodded and moved his hand in a “go on” gesture.

I reached over and clicked on one of the photographs, enlarging it. “This is Laura Almasi.”

“Tell me.”

I moved around to his side of the table and scooted in next to him. “According to the Texas DMV, she lives in a wealthy enclave of Dallas called University Park. That’s only forty minutes from Cedar Hill.”

“And—?”

“Valor is headquartered in Cedar Hill.”

He looked at me, eyebrows up, then used his forefinger to scroll through the information I’d pulled up on Almasi.

“This shows a PO Box in Colorado,” he said. “Lindon.”

“Right.” My knee started bouncing again. “Lindon is on the eastern plains, an hour’s drive from where we sit. It’s a post office and a hundred and fifty people scattered around the area. But take a look at the satellite imagery south and east of the town.”

I clicked on the tab I’d brought up for Google Earth. The screen showed an aerial photo of the Colorado plains centered around an area so pixelated and blurry that it was impossible to make out what was there.

Dougie gave a low whistle. “This kind of obstruction is extremely hard to get. Takes connections.”

“Government ones?”

“Probably not. In the US, Google doesn’t block even those sites that involve national security. A raft of public-access lawyers make sure of it. But a private entity can request masking. There’s an entire city on the East Coast that did just that. It’s rare, though. There must be something pretty damn interesting going on out there.”

For the first time since we’d been back together, I heard the old excitement in his voice, like a line of quicksilver.

My own excitement bubbled up, and I forced myself to take a deep breath. We had very little time to find Cohen. I needed to be sure.

“Why else might this area be obscured?” I asked.

“There are a few possibilities.” He zoomed in and out of the satellite photo. “Google occasionally blocks places for unusual reasons. Like protecting rare species from poachers.”

“Last I looked, prairie dogs and cattle aren’t on the endangered species list. Even more interesting—just two years ago, this area wasn’t obscured. It was just a three-mile square stretch of grassland in the middle of nowhere. Then suddenly we get Almasi’s PO Box, a land title held by a holding company that I can’t dig into no matter what I try, and a flurry of construction permits. I even found a reference to the FAA, which suggests there’s a runway out there.”

“Fascinating.” He looked up from the computer, his eyes bright in the morning sun. “You think Cohen is out there.”

“It’s remote, out of sight, and way off the beaten path. If you want to hurt someone, maybe kill and bury—”

I stopped.

Dougie dropped his hand on mine. “The most likely explanation is that a private company wants to hide what they’re doing from their competitors, and they have the clout to make it happen.” He withdrew his hand, leaned back on the bench, and folded his arms. “They wouldn’t be in the assassination business.”