Chapter 16

SAWYER’S EYES NARROWEDas he watched Janie’s brother argue with the two men. That David knew anyone well enough to argue with them was puzzling and made Sawyer reconsider how long the man had been in Hartman.

He grabbed his phone and took several pictures of the trio before tucking Janie into the passenger seat of his SUV and circling the hood to climb behind the wheel.

“Did you get them?” Brody asked.

“Yep.”

“We need to run the photos through our databases to see if we get a hit.”

“I’ll take care of it as soon as we return to the safe house.”

“Drive down the block and park behind a building,” Brody instructed. “I want to check the vehicle for trackers.”

Excellent idea. He’d planned to do that before his team leader mentioned it. Sawyer drove to one of the local banks and parked behind the building.

Brody hopped out with his electronic signal detector in hand and circled the vehicle. He paused at the rear of the SUV, dropped below Sawyer’s line of vision only to reappear a moment later. He walked to a car four spaces over and pressed his hand to the wheel well, then returned to the SUV.

“One tracker.”

“How did they know which vehicle we arrived in?” Janie asked.

“We were the only customers inside the coffee shop,” Sawyer said. “The rest of the customers were in the drive-through lane.”

He drove to Main Street and turned in the opposite direction that he’d been heading, taking detours through neighborhoods and doubling back on himself, turning squares to see if he could spot a tail.

After 30 minutes, Sawyer headed for the safe house. He glanced at Janie. She was staring out the side window, her hands fisted. “You okay, sweetheart?”

She shook her head. “This is so wrong,” she muttered. “I don’t understand why this is happening.”

“We’ll figure it out and when we do, everything will make sense.”

“What can you do to help with your shop, Janie?” Brody asked.

Sawyer’s friend was trying to distract Janie. At the moment, there was nothing anyone could do. They needed more information.

“I need to place another order for supplies. I’d planned to do that after lunch, but my brother’s sudden appearance distracted me.”

“We have laptops with encryption at the safe house. You’ll be able to place your order without fear of anyone seeing what you’re doing.”

Didn’t mean the enemy wasn’t monitoring her business’s suppliers. Still, Sawyer knew the chances of that were remote. If they tried to get a lock on her location, they’d fail. Zane’s safeguards on the laptops were too good to break without several alerts on Fortress’s end to warn of hacking.

“What about dinner?” Brody asked. “Do you and Sawyer have a meal in mind?”

Sawyer glanced at his team leader in the rearview mirror. “We haven’t had lunch yet. The sandwiches we put together are in the refrigerator, waiting for us.”

The other man glared. “I’m a growing boy. I have to plan ahead.”

Janie laughed. “What did you have in mind? I don’t know what ingredients we have in the kitchen.”

“I think lasagna would be perfect after the day you’ve had.”

“Are you making it?”

Sawyer groaned. “Trust me, Janie. You don’t want Brody attempting it. We’d have the fire department at our door in minutes.”

“Hey,” Brody protested. “I’m not that bad.”

“You’re worse.”

Together, he and Brody regaled Janie with tales of their cooking disasters and kept Janie rolling with laughter.

She wiped tears from her face as she glanced over her shoulder at Brody. “You have to be pulling my leg. No one as intelligent as you two could be that bad at cooking.”

“A lot you know,” Brody groused. “I think Sawyer’s gene pool is missing the cooking gene.”

“I must be kin to you,” Sawyer tossed back.

“How does your team survive when you’re in the field if all of you are so bad at cooking?”

“MREs,” they said at the same time.

“What are those?”

“Meals ready to eat.” Brody shook his head. “They have plenty of nutrition but taste like cardboard.”

“They’re in packets,” Sawyer added. “Sometimes, they include dessert.”

“Does that make up for the lack of taste in the rest of the meal?”

“Not really, but when you need fuel and you’re out in the field or on the run, you eat what you have.”

“What happens if you run out of MREs?”

“We scrounge. We know what plants and fruits are safe to eat.”

“No meat?”

Sawyer shook his head. “No time to hunt something and prepare it. Besides, the jet also carries food for us. Once we’re wheels up, we can eat as much as we want.”

“And drink real coffee,” Brody said. “I think I miss that the most when we’re in the field. We don’t have time to sit down and enjoy coffee.”

“I thought you would have said you missed Sage above all else,” Sawyer said.

“That goes without saying.” A sly smile curved his mouth. “I guess you’ll be joining the rest of us in missing our significant others.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I will.” He planned to complain as much as his teammates.

Sawyer turned left onto the country road where the safe house was located and soon parked behind their temporary quarters. He and Brody went through the same routine of checking the house for unwanted intrusion while leaving Janie locked in the SUV.

Within two minutes, Sawyer returned for Janie and escorted her inside the house. After he reset the alarm, he and Brody set the platter of sandwiches in the center of the table and glasses of cold water, along with empty plates. They also set a bag of potato chips next to the platter.

“Choose the sandwich you want,” Sawyer said. “Brody and I will eat anything that doesn’t eat us first.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Your body needs fuel, Janie.”

She sighed. “All right. I’ll try.” Janie studied the pile of sandwiches and chose one filled with chicken and cheese.

Although she ignored the chips, Sawyer didn’t push. If she ate the sandwich, he’d be happy.

When they finished lunch, Sawyer retrieved his laptop, logged on, and handed the computer to Janie. “Take your time. Brody and I have work of our own to do.”

“I can wait. I don’t want to interfere with your job.”

“I’ll use the safe house laptop. Brody has his own computer with him.”

“Thanks for letting me use your computer.”

He squeezed her shoulder and left her to work. Sawyer retrieved the safe house laptop, logged in, and transferred the photos he took to the computer and loaded them into the databases to see if the faces of the strangers were in the database system.

While the search ran, he researched Janie’s brother. The deeper he dug, the less he liked what he was seeing. David Moran had a long history of making bad choices. While he’d never been in trouble with law enforcement, he was heavily in debt, despite drawing a good salary from the engineering company employing him.

He’d fared marginally better since he moved to Chile and married Maria. However, his debt load was growing at a rapid rate again. From what Sawyer had dug up, David was borrowing heavily against his house and didn’t have enough equity to borrow against it again.

Lately, he’d started taking advances on his credit cards to fund his expenses. Sawyer frowned. No sign of where he spent the money. Ferreting out that information might require someone with more computer expertise than he had.

Immediately, he thought of Simone, Jesse’s girlfriend. She was a computer whiz. Since his team already had Zane running checks for them, Sawyer sent Jesse a text message. He received a reply less than a minute later.

Excellent. Sawyer messaged Simone and thanked her for taking the time to see what she could find out about Janie’s brother.

That done, he shifted his attention to researching Vatos Locos. A very organized and regimented group from what he could tell. Hard to believe the group at large was 10,000 strong, the members stretching from Chile all the way up into Canada. Of course, they didn’t have a formal roster for him to see. The leader’s lieutenants had been photographed frequently. The leader? Nowhere to be seen. Like the tech team at Fortress had said, no identity on the leader.

So how did the group keep the members accountable? They must have divided the membership among the lieutenants. The leader’s underlings kept their assigned members in line. This was a slick operation, more like a military campaign than a group of thugs bullying their way to the top of the food chain.

He frowned. Was it possible some of the gang’s top lieutenants were former military? That would explain the ruthless organization. It would also mean these guys were more dangerous than he originally thought. Former military meant an actual plan instead of a fly-by-night operation.

Why had these men targeted Janie? Had she seen or heard something that she shouldn’t have? If so, what could it be? Was Brent right about her missing fellow hostage?

His laptop signaled a result on the search for identification of the two men arguing with Moran. He clicked on the tab and scanned the results.

Sawyer’s jaw tightened. Not good.

“Sawyer?”

He glanced up at Janie. “Yes?”

“Is something wrong?”

Did he hold back the information that was sure to upset and disillusion her? Less than a second later, he answered his own question. No way was he starting a relationship based on lies with this woman. She was too important to him.

He wouldn’t be able to tell her everything because of mission security. However, this wasn’t a case of protecting information for the sake of mission security. He simply didn’t want to bring more pain into her life. Since there was no way to prevent it, he’d rather not bring her wrath down on his head. Let David deal with his sister’s anger and disappointment.

He pushed back from the table and set his laptop in front of Janie. The two men appeared on the screen side by side.

“Who are they?”

“The two men arguing with your brother. They’re known members of Vatos Locos.”

Janie stared for a moment, then she sighed. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll have to talk to him again, won’t we?”

“You okay with that?”

“No, but what choice do I have?”

“You could let me and one of my teammates talk to him.”

“We don’t know where he’s staying.”

“It won’t take long to find him. Our tech people are excellent, especially Jesse’s girlfriend.” He cupped her face between his palms. “Are you sure I can’t take care of this for you?”

Janie shook her head. “Thanks for wanting to protect me. I can’t lay this responsibility on you because it’s hard. Besides, you don’t know my brother as well as I do. I’ll know if he’s lying.”

So would he. However, Sawyer wouldn’t insist. Janie Moran was a strong woman who knew her own mind. If she felt she needed to do this herself, he had to step back and walk beside her instead of in front of her. “All right. Finish your order for the shop. I’ll contact Fortress and have them locate where your brother is staying.”

Sawyer grabbed his phone and stepped outside the back door. Walking the perimeter while he talked to the Fortress tech sounded like a great idea. He needed to walk off his frustration.

Zane answered his call. “Miss me already?” his friend teased.

“Ha. Only your wife misses you that quickly, my friend.”

Zane chuckled. “Ouch, man. That hurts. What do you need?”

“A location on David Moran.” He summarized the conversation with Moran and the suspicious exchange between Moran and two Vatos Locos soldiers.

A soft whistle broke the silence. “That’s not good.”

“Tell me about it. Janie’s having a hard time accepting her brother might be responsible for the attacks she’s endured for the past few days.”

“What’s your gut say?”

“He’s involved in this somehow. I don’t know how deep he’s in, but he’s not as innocent as Janie wants to believe.”

The sound of Zane’s fingers clicking his keyboard at a rapid pace drifted through the speaker. “Got him. He’s at Kingsbridge Inn, Room 217.”

“Next question. How long has Moran been registered there?”

More keys clicking, then, “Three days.”

Sawyer stopped walking. “Are you sure?”

“No question.”

David Moran had been in Hartman before Janie had returned to the states.