Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(29)

“Do you think the threat is legitimate?”

“Nate does.”

“I’ll put some feelers out in town,” she said. “If anyone suspicious shows up I’ll make sure you know about it.”

“That would be good,” Joe said. Because the library was the community center of sorts, Marybeth had access to people and information that would fly under law enforcement’s radar, he knew.

Locals operated and communicated in entirely different lanes than the law enforcement community. It wasn’t unusual, for example, to find out later that locals knew who the perpetrators of crimes were long before that perp’s name ever came up during the investigation. That was due to gossip, social media, and one-on-one interaction within the valley that cops weren’t involved in.

Sheriff Reed had made an effort to bridge the divide with locals by having coffee every morning with the city fathers at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant or simply rolling his chair down the sidewalks in town and making small talk with his constituents. Because of Joe’s job and the locals he encountered in the field, he was hooked into the blood, fins, and feathers crowd. But overall, Marybeth took the pulse of the entire community daily in and around the library.

Not only that, she said, she’d spend as much time as she could doing research on the deep web cartel sites she’d discovered and social media posts that might unwittingly give them a leg up on who might be coming and when.

“You’d think they’d stay off the internet,” she said. “But they don’t. They think because you can’t google them, they’re invisible, but if you know the specific IP addresses, you can access the cartel sites. People just can’t help themselves—they talk too much. Even criminals.”

Marybeth said she could monitor suspicious guests checking in at local hotels and motels as well.

“How?” Joe asked.

“It’s the month of our annual book sale,” she said. “We put collection boxes all over town for people to drop off used books. That includes the lobbies of all the accommodations, since visitors often leave books they’ve read or they want to be rid of. I usually assign that job to one of our library foundation volunteers, but this year I could do it myself. I can ask the front desk people if they have any interesting guests.”

Joe whistled. He was impressed with her, as always. Marybeth had a manner about her that made people want to talk to her. And if the cartel hit man had the same look and characteristics as the members of the Wolf Pack who had ventured to Twelve Sleep County six months before, they’d stand out among the tourists, hunters, and fly fishermen who stayed at the hotel properties.

“Now I won’t be able to sleep,” she lamented. “I’ll worry about Nate and Liv and especially Kestrel. That little girl of theirs took me back. I want another one around this house someday. Do you think it’ll be Sheridan, April, or Lucy first?”

“I try not think about that,” Joe said.

“Don’t you want to be Grandpa Joe?”

He moaned and rubbed his eyes. It was too much for him to think about right now. But he kind of liked the idea, now that he thought about it . . .

*

IT WAS THREE-THIRTY in the morning—again—when Joe awoke to Marybeth’s prodding him. He’d been sleeping hard and he was momentarily confused.

“Your phone,” she said.

He fumbled for it on the bed stand as it skittered along the surface. It took a few seconds for him to focus on the name on the screen.

DUANE PATTERSON

Joe punched him up and said, “This better be good.”

Patterson was out of breath as if he’d been running. He said, “It isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”

“So what’s up?”

“I was driving home and someone took a shot at me in my car. Right through the windshield.”

“What?”

“They missed,” Patterson said. “But I’ve got glass in my hair and my eyes. I think my head is bleeding.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“Hell no,” Patterson said angrily. “It was too dark to see anything at all. But I’m so shaky I don’t think I can drive.”

“Where are you?” Joe asked, throwing the blankets aside and leaping up. The bedroom floor was cold on his bare feet.

Patterson said he was on Four Mile Road and Highway 78 in the borrow ditch on the side of the road.

“Stay where you are,” Joe said. “I’m on my way.”

“What if he’s still out there?”

“Stay low.”

“Hell, I’m on the floor of my car. If I got any lower, I’d be underneath it.”

“Did you call the sheriff?” Joe asked as he stepped into his Wranglers and reached for his uniform shirt in the closet.

“Why would I call him?” Patterson said with heat borne of panic.

“I’ll let him know,” Joe said.

As he buttoned up, Marybeth asked from the dark, “Was that Duane? Is he okay?”

“Someone took a shot at him,” Joe said. “I’m going out there.”

“Please be careful.”

“Always am.”

“No, actually, you never are,” she said. “But now we know.”