Chapter 2 - The Man Beneath My Garage
I didn't look at Rachel.
Not right away.
Fourteen years in special operations taught me one thing about fear.
People reveal more in the three seconds after they say something terrible than they do in the next three hours of explaining it.
Rachel's breathing was shallow.
Her right hand kept drifting toward her phone.
Her left foot pressed against the floorboard as if she were trying to stop the truck herself.
She wasn't watching the vehicle behind us.
She was watching my reaction.
"Who's still there?" I asked.
"Ethan—"
"Name."
She shut her eyes.
"Daniel Mercer."
I knew the name.
Not personally.
Three weeks earlier, a woman named Evelyn Mercer had come into my repair shop carrying a photograph of her twenty-six-year-old son.
She said Daniel had disappeared after taking a temporary job with a county road contractor.
The sheriff claimed he'd left town voluntarily.
Evelyn didn't believe him.
She'd asked me to check an old blue Ford because Daniel had worked on it before he vanished.
I remembered her final words.
My son doesn't leave his dog behind.
I never found anything wrong with the truck.
Now the photograph seemed to burn through my memory.
"Daniel Mercer is under my garage?"
"I don't know if he's alive."
The black pickup closed the distance.
I adjusted my rearview mirror.
"How do you know he's there?"
"Travis told me."
"When?"
"Last night."
My heart seemed to stop.
Last night.
Rachel had told me she was attending a school foundation meeting.
She'd come home after eleven smelling of expensive perfume I hadn't bought her.
I'd made her tea.
Asked whether she'd eaten.
She'd kissed my cheek without looking at me.
"What did he tell you, exactly?"
Rachel wrapped her arms around herself.
"He said Daniel had been asking questions about shipments. He said there was an accident and they needed someplace safe."
"Safe?"
"I know how it sounds."
"No, Rachel. You don't."
The pickup accelerated again.
I took the next right.
An unpaved ranch road disappeared between long fences and rolling fields.
The truck followed.
Rachel looked behind us.
"They're not going to stop."
"I know."
"Then why are you slowing down?"
"Because I want to know whether they're following me or the highway."
I made another turn.
Then another.
The pickup remained behind us.
That answered the question.
I called Whitcomb back.
She picked up immediately.
"Commander?"
"Vehicle surveillance confirmed. Black pickup, no front plate, following us on County Road 9. I have a missing-person name. Daniel Mercer. Possible unlawful detention or homicide connected to a property I own."
"Do not attempt a rescue alone."
"I haven't said I would."
"Your tone says otherwise."
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Sarah Whitcomb had served as legal counsel during an investigation that nearly ended my career eight years earlier.
She knew me well enough to recognize when I was about to become unreasonable.
"I need the FBI field office contacted," I said.
"Already in progress. Stay alive long enough for them to help."
The line disconnected.
Rachel stared at me.
"You know her?"
"Yes."
"Who is she?"
"A lawyer."
"That's all?"
"No."
I watched the pickup shift toward the centerline.
"She's one of the few people I trust."
Rachel flinched.
I hated that part of me noticed.
I hated even more that another part still wanted to comfort her.
The pickup's engine roared.
It came up beside us.
A tinted window lowered.
I saw the passenger.
Short dark hair.
A heavy jaw.
A pale scar running from his ear to his neck.
He raised something black.
A handgun.
"Get down!" I shouted.
I hit the brakes.
The first shot cracked across the windshield.
Glass exploded.
Rachel screamed.
I turned the steering wheel sharply and drove into a shallow drainage ditch.
The truck bounced violently.
The second shot tore through the passenger-side mirror.
I pulled Rachel down by her coat.
"Stay below the windows!"
The pickup overshot us.
Its brake lights flashed.
It began reversing.
I threw my truck into four-wheel drive, climbed the ditch, and cut through a livestock gate that hung open.
Fence posts whipped past.
A narrow trail ran between two hills.
I knew that trail.
I'd helped repair a rancher's tractor there last winter.
The black pickup couldn't follow without risking its suspension.
I accelerated across the field.
Behind us, the truck stopped.
Two men climbed out.
One raised his weapon.
The other grabbed a radio.
I kept driving until the hills swallowed them.
Five minutes later, we reached the abandoned north irrigation shed.
I pulled behind the concrete structure and shut off the engine.
Silence filled the cab.
The windshield was cracked.
The passenger mirror was gone.
Rachel was crying quietly.
I checked her for injuries.
"Are you hit?"
She shook her head.
"Look at me."
"I'm fine."
"Rachel."
She finally met my eyes.
There was a thin cut along her cheek.
Nothing serious.
I took a clean cloth from the glove compartment.
She stared at it.
"You're bleeding," I told her.
She let me press the cloth against her skin.
For one brief second, my wife returned.
The woman I'd once promised to protect.
Then she whispered, "You shouldn't have called anyone."
I pulled my hand away.
"Why?"
She shook her head.
"Because now they'll know."
"Know what?"
"That you're not who you said you were."
I stared at her.
"Rachel, I told you about my service before we married."
"Not all of it."
"No. Not all of it."
She looked at the broken windshield.
"Travis said if he could make you angry enough, you'd reveal yourself."
I felt something cold settle inside my chest.
"The diner."
She nodded.
"The milkshake."
Another nod.
"The public humiliation."
"Yes."
"That was a test."
Rachel began shaking harder.
"He needed you to hit him."
"Why?"
"Because then he could arrest you."
"For assaulting a sheriff."
"And search the garage."
I sat very still.
A warrant.
A public assault.
A disgraced veteran with a violent past.
They could manufacture a reason to search my property without anyone questioning why the sheriff was suddenly interested in a mechanic's land.
But one piece didn't fit.
"If Daniel is already on my property, why does Cole need a warrant?"
Rachel looked toward the floor.
"He doesn't."
"Then what does he need?"
She covered her face.
"Your fingerprints."
I waited.
"On what?"
She didn't answer.
Then I heard a sound outside.
A single metallic click.
Not loud.
Not accidental.
Somebody was opening the irrigation shed's exterior latch.
I reached for the door handle.
Rachel caught my sleeve.
"Ethan."
Her voice was barely audible.
"There's something else."
"What?"
May you like
She looked past my shoulder.
"I didn't come to the diner alone."
