“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
He smiled without humor.
“Your bail will be set tomorrow.”
“You planning to charge the six men who attacked me?”
“No witnesses saw them attack you.”
“Interesting.”
“Small town.”
“Apparently.”
He stepped closer to the bars.
“You should’ve kept driving, Mercer.”
There it was.
Not subtle anymore.
I stared at him.
“Maybe.”
Then I smiled.
“But now I’m curious.”
For the first time, Sheriff Harlan stopped looking comfortable.
At 1:12 in the morning, the cell door opened.
I had expected Harlan.
Instead, Emily stood there with a deputy I hadn’t seen before.
The deputy was young and sweating.
“This is a bad idea,” he muttered.
Emily answered, “So was joining this department.”
He glared at her.
Then unlocked my cuffs.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Emily handed me my wallet.
“Charges were dropped.”
“By Harlan?”
“Then by who?”
She looked toward the front entrance.
A tall man in a dark suit stepped through the door.
He was sixty, maybe older, with close-cropped white hair and posture that no civilian tailor could hide.
I knew him.
Colonel Daniel Cross.
Retired.
My battalion commander for three years.
The same man who had pinned Rex’s retirement medal onto his harness that afternoon.
“Sir?”
Cross smiled.
“Haven’t been called that in a while.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I got a strange call.”
“From?”
He looked at Emily.
She looked away.
That bothered me.
Cross motioned toward the door.
“We should leave.”
Outside, Rex nearly pulled Emily off balance reaching me.
I dropped to one knee.
He pressed his head against my chest so hard it hurt.
“Yeah, yeah,” I whispered into his wet-smelling fur. “I missed you too.”
He licked my chin once.
Then sneezed.
I laughed.
It was the first normal sound I had made all day.
Cross stood beside my truck.
The parking lot was empty.
I approached him.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Your former commanding officer gets a call that one of his men has been arrested after six bikers attack him? Word travels.”
“Who called?”
He hesitated.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
Cross stared at me.
Then nodded toward the truck.
“Emily said you think someone tracked you.”
I looked at her.
She crossed her arms.
“I told him.”
“Because he got you out.”
That was true.
I crouched beside the rear wheel.
Nothing obvious.
Then I checked the frame.
Rex watched me.
His head tilted.
I reached farther under the chassis.
My fingers touched plastic.
I pulled out a black box smaller than a deck of cards.
A magnetic tracker.
Professional equipment.
No commercial markings.
Cross’s expression hardened.
“Where did you get that?”
“Under my truck.”
“I can see that.”
He took it.
Turned it over.
Then went completely still.
I knew that look.
Cross rubbed his thumb over a faint stamped number.
“This equipment isn’t civilian.”
Emily leaned closer.
“What is it?”
Cross answered slowly.
“Military.”
I looked at him.
“From the base?”
He didn’t answer.
“Daniel.”
His eyes met mine.
The word sat between us.
The ceremony.
The installation.
The tracker.
Someone had attached it before Rex and I left.
Someone with access.
Someone knew our vehicle.
Someone knew our route.
And someone had arranged for Butch to provoke me.
Cross shook his head.
Rex suddenly moved away from us.
His nose dropped toward the pavement.
“Rex.”
He ignored me.
That was unusual.
He circled the rear tire.
Sniffed the tracker.
Then froze.
His ears came forward.
His breathing changed.
I knew that behavior.
He knew a smell.
“What is it, buddy?”
Rex sniffed again.
Then looked toward the road.
Cross stared at him.
“You recognize that?”
“I recognize him recognizing something.”
Rex touched his nose to the device.
Then whined.
A memory hit me.
Not a visual memory.
A smell.
Metal.
Oil.
Burned insulation.
And something sweet beneath it.
A chemical odor from a place I had spent years trying to forget.
The Korengal cache.
I looked at Cross.
He had reached the same conclusion.
“No,” he whispered.
Emily looked between us.
I held up the tracker.
“This has been somewhere it shouldn’t have been.”
“Where?”
Cross answered.
“A weapons storage compound that officially ceased to exist six years ago.”
Six years earlier, Rex had saved six men.
That was the story everybody knew.
It wasn’t the whole story.
Our team had been operating in a narrow valley against a network moving explosives across the mountains.
We found a hidden cache beneath an abandoned stone house.
Rifles.
Detonators.
Explosives.
Nothing unusual.
Then Rex alerted on a steel container buried beneath the floor.
Inside were American components.