Secrets of the Lynx (11 page)

Kendra sat down at the big conference table and looked at the men already seated there, coffee mugs in hand. As Paul suspected, she’d read all their files. She knew about each of Paul’s foster brothers.

Besides Preston, the city cop, and Daniel, the business security expert, there was Kyle, who was with the NCIS at Diego Garcia. Rick was with the FBI, but his current overseas work—location not listed—had been redacted in the one paragraph summary she’d been able to access. Reading between the lines, she assumed Rick was working undercover. All of the men, raised in a foster home by a tribal medicine man, were connected to law enforcement in some way. All except for Gene, who was a truck driver turned rancher in southwestern Colorado. From the documents she’d seen, they were a tight-knit group, and she could certainly use trained, trustworthy manpower.

“I’m going to need some help, guys, but what I say here today can’t leave this room.” She took the offered mug of hot coffee.

Paul looked at her and nodded.

Daniel did the same.

Only Preston hesitated. “I can’t withhold information from my P.D., not if it’s something that affects them directly.”

“I understand, but this has more to do with the marshals service than it does with your department.”

“Come on, Preston. I need you in on this,” Paul said.

She saw the look that passed between both men and knew that nothing would ever trump their loyalty to each other.

“All right,” Preston said at last. “I’m in.”

Kendra nodded, and with a steady voice began. “The shooter who came after me tonight may be linked to a case I was working before coming here. He and Miller may even be working together.”

It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, but no one interrupted the silence. Grateful, she considered her words carefully. The colonel and the marshals service had taught her to present facts as clearly and as succinctly as possible, leaving emotion—in this case her fears and sense of betrayal—out of the narrative.

“Before I was sent here to search for Chris Miller, I was working a different fugitive retrieval case. The felon I was after, John Lester, is a convicted gunrunner and a suspected member of the Hawthorn cartel. He served six months, then broke out of a Texas lockup. Since then he’s always remained a step ahead of us. Last time we got a lead, I prepared for the takedown by restricting information to our office only. I also held off filing any reports that would give away the salient details. There was no way Lester could have guessed our next move, yet somehow he was tipped off. By the time we got to where he’d been staying, the only things left were his fingerprints.”

Paul, Daniel and Preston exchanged glances again, but remained silent.

Kendra continued. “That’s when I began to suspect we had an informant in our offices, someone inside the service,” she said. “In view of what’s happened, I think it’s possible I was taken off that case because someone wanted me out of the way. Miller is the Hawthorn cartel’s wet-work specialist, and Lester is a gunrunner for them. That connection may explain why I’m now a target.”

“But what you’ve said also leads back to me,” Paul said. “The judge my partner and I were protecting was presiding over Mark Hawthorn’s trial. He’s Garrett Hawthorn’s brother, the leader of the Hawthorn cartel. I’m in the crosshairs because I prevented the death of the judge, and Mark was eventually convicted of murder.”

“Do you have any evidence that proves the Hawthorn cartel has an informant inside the marshals service?” Preston asked.

Kendra shook her head. “All I’ve got is this. Right before I was sent here, while I was still hot on Lester’s trail, I spotted someone tailing me after hours. I tried to double back more than once to catch the guy, but he was good, and I never did get a look at him—or her. I finally fell back on procedure and reported it.”

Preston nodded approvingly. “Sometimes following protocol is the only way to go.”

She shrugged. “Evan Thomas, my supervisory inspector, put two deputy marshals on me, but they couldn’t find any evidence that I was being followed. Neither did I. Eventually I was called to Evan’s office. The consensus that came down the chain of command was that I’d been working the Lester case too long and hard. I was given a choice. I could take leave and see the shrink, or accept another case, like the hunt for Miller.”

“You were making certain people nervous,” Paul said.

“Yeah, that’s the way I saw it, too, but all I had was a gut feeling and a few random glances at a careful stalker—a man.”

“Could it have been Miller?” Paul asked.

“Maybe, I only got a glimpse or two. Without solid evidence, there was no way for me to prove any of it. But the guy had some serious training. Three of us couldn’t work him into a corner.”

“And now your supervisory inspector is assuming you’re paranoid,” Preston said. “But based solely on the facts, his theory about tonight’s shooting at least has some merit. In the shooter’s eyes, Paul’s an easier target once his backup is taken out.”

She shook her head. “Experienced snipers learn to focus and filter out distractions. If Paul had been his target, the bullets would have been directed toward him first. He wouldn’t have wasted the opportunity to take him out. More details—Paul was closer, and I was moving away from the shooter’s location. If Paul was the target, I certainly wasn’t in the way, blocking his line of fire. If anything, it was the other way around.”

“I agree with your conclusions,” Daniel said.

“So here’s what I think we should do, though admittedly, it carries some risk,” she said. “I want to gather up photos of local criminals with the right weapons training and background, then take those to Annie. Let’s see if she can ID any of them as ‘Chuck.’ If she can’t, then we go back to searching for Miller.”

“That’s a good idea,” Paul said.

“Why don’t you access the photos from my computer here?” Daniel asked Preston.

“Yeah, might as well. It’ll save time,” he said.

“I’m going to call the rehab center and get an update on Annie,” Paul said, reaching for his cell phone and moving away.

Kendra remained with Preston and Daniel, and a few minutes later, Paul rejoined them, a somber look on his face. “Bad news.”

Something in his tone made Kendra’s blood turn to ice. “What’s wrong?”

“Annie’s gone.”

Chapter Nine

Kendra swallowed hard. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“It looks like she just split,” Paul said. “She was at a group counseling session when she excused herself. They never saw her after that, so they think she may have slipped out the side door.”

“That wouldn’t have been hard to do,” Preston said. “She was in protective custody—she wasn’t a prisoner. A street-wise person like Annie Crenshaw would have found it easy to give them the slip.”

“The center reported her absence to the P.D. about an hour ago. The D.A. was notified since Annie is a material witness to a crime,” Paul said. “Officers checked out the gym where she’d been crashing, but they didn’t find her.”

“What about her cell phone?” Kendra asked. “Let me call her, or better yet, Paul, you do it. You had more of a connection with her.”

He dialed, but no one answered. “All I’m getting is her voice mail. Let’s stop by the alley where we first found her. Maybe she’s working the streets again. Or maybe we can find somebody who’s seen her and pick up a fresh lead.”

“Good idea,” Kendra said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll put a BOLO out on her,” Preston said.

Daniel was the last to speak. “Wait a minute, guys. I’ve got an idea. Give me her cell number, Paul. If her phone’s still on, I may be able to track the signal.”

“You’ve got equipment that can do that?” Kendra looked over, eyebrows raised.

Daniel shrugged.

“Don’t ask,” Paul said, leading Kendra to the door. “Let’s go. If he gets something, he’ll let us know.”

They were on their way a short time later. “We’ll be getting there while people are still out on the streets so that’ll help. If she’s not there, we can ask around,” she said.

They arrived a short time later and walked the alley from Third to Fourth Street, but couldn’t locate Annie. Although they searched the area themselves and talked to the working girls, no one had seen her.

Soon they began cruising the neighboring streets in Paul’s truck. There was heavy traffic around a city park sheltered on all four sides by multiple-story buildings.

“This is a good place for the street people to hang out away from the cold,” he said.

“This park is more sheltered than the area around Fourth Street. With those scanty outfits, the women must be freezing this evening,” she said. “I just don’t understand what makes them choose the life.”

“They tell themselves it’s temporary, and that things are going to change for them real soon. That hope is sometimes all they’ve got to hold on to. Remember the movie
Pretty Woman?
The little girl who dares to dream of bigger and better things is still inside these women. That’s what gets them through the day.”

It was the gentling of his voice that captured her attention most. The way he’d treated Brandy and the others may have been rooted in something more than compassion. She had a strong feeling that there was a lot more to Paul’s story. She wanted to ask him about it, but this wasn’t the time for distractions.

“There’s Kat, the brunette we saw before,” Kendra said. “She just came out of that apartment building.”

Paul pulled over to the curb. Kat and two other women were standing near the street corner as he and Kendra approached.

Kat looked over at them and managed a shaky smile. “Slow, cold night,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “You still looking for Annie?”

Paul nodded. “Have you seen her?”

“She came by about ten minutes ago. She said she needed quick cash to get out of town. Got lucky, I guess, ’cause she scored a ‘date’ almost immediately.”

“You get a good look at the vehicle—and the john?” Kendra pressed.

“It was an old van, Chevy or a Dodge. The guy had a beard, neatly trimmed, matching dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses.”

“What about the van? Can you describe it?” Paul asked her.

“Like from the eighties. It was faded blue with one of those chrome ladders in the back and a luggage rack on the roof.”

“Did you happen to catch the license plate?” Paul asked.

“No, sorry,” she said, shivering.

Paul fished a few bills from his wallet. “Here you go, Kat. Call it a night, go home, and get warm.”

“Thanks, Paul. If you ever need anything, information...or whatever...just drop by.”

“Take care of yourself, Kat.”

As she walked off, Kendra gave Paul a gentle smile. “You’re not an undercover minister or something like that, right?”

He shook his head, chuckling. “No. I just know what it’s like to be alone, miserable and afraid. It’s something you never forget.”

She wanted to know more, above and beyond the cold compilation of facts that were in his file, but before she could ask, he got down to business again.

“We need to work this block and talk to anyone who might have seen that van,” he said.

“Let’s split up. It’ll go faster.”

Kendra asked everyone she saw on her side of the street, but no one wanted to talk to her or get involved. By the time she joined Paul again, she knew at a glance he had nothing new to share either.

“I have a real bad feeling about this,” Kendra said.

He nodded slowly. “There are hundreds of old vans in the Four Corners. Finding one based solely on the description we got is going to be tough.”

“Even if we did, it doesn’t mean the owner was driving it. It could have been stolen.”

“Let’s follow up on it from that angle, but meanwhile let’s get out of this wind. I’ll call Preston as we walk back to the truck and have him check the hot sheet. He’ll put out a BOLO on the van, too,” he said.

Paul brought out his phone but was forced to leave a voice mail.

Kendra’s teeth were chattering by the time they got inside the truck. She wrapped Paul’s leather jacket even more tightly around her and aimed the heating vent toward her. “Gusts like those get inside your clothing and chill you to the bone.”

“The Navajo People say Wind’s the messenger of the gods. Very little deters him.”

“Is Wind supposed to bring good news or bad?” she asked.

“It brings...change.”

“A nasty wind like this one, cold and bitter, can’t bring anything good,” she said, and shuddered, still cold.

“To those who’ll remain outside, probably not. Be glad we’ll have food to eat and a warm place to sleep tonight.”

Again she heard that haunted tone in his voice. “You sound like someone who knows firsthand what it’s like to be hungry and cold.”

“I do. It happened to me more times than I care to remember.”

She started to ask him more, but just then Paul’s phone rang. It was Preston.

Kendra watched Paul, lost in thought. Before flying down to New Mexico she’d studied former Deputy U.S. Marshal Paul Grayhorse’s file extensively. Yet the longer she was around him the more she realized that those cold facts didn’t really tell Paul’s story.

Paul glanced over at her as he was placed on hold. “Preston’s checking the local and regional hot sheet. Let’s see if he gets a hit on that van.”

They didn’t have long to wait, and with Preston’s permission, Paul put him on speaker.

“Okay, here’s what I got,” Preston said. “We’ve had no reports of a stolen blue van in Hartley, but I broadened the search and found one in Durango, which is less than an hour away. The report is about two hours old, and, according to a witness, the van was last seen heading south.”

“Toward New Mexico—and here,” Paul said.

“So what are you thinking, bro?” Preston asked.

“Annie would have avoided ‘Chuck’ at all costs—unless he wore a disguise, which is one of Miller’s areas of expertise,” Paul said. “The fact that the john who picked her up had a beard and glasses...” He paused for a moment. “If we don’t find Annie, she’s as good as dead.”

“I’ll send additional units to the area, but we had a shooting outside a restaurant on the east side less than an hour ago. That gunman’s still at large, so most of our available officers are there.”