Page 4 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)
Grief was lethal. It stayed tucked neatly away, pinned at the edges, until one random moment opened the sealed fissures, and suddenly it poured through the cracks, bleeding out in a flood that could take a man to his knees, leave him broken, wrecked.
Distraught.
Conner pressed his hand against the weeping windowpane of the Two Harbors McDonald’s, the cold rasping up his arm, a shot of bracing reality.
He needed to pull himself together, tuck away the fraying edges that left his entire body humming with unrequited adrenaline, and show up the healed, whole man that Liza expected. Needed.
Deserved.
“Should I take you to the dog-run area, maybe let you off your leash?” Jed came up beside him, holding his order ticket.
“No. Just get your food and let’s get back on the road.”
The finest rays of sun had wrestled through the layer of gray clouds, glinting off the puddles of the grimy pavement.
A line of mud-coated cars trailed out from the drive-through, and the tiny waiting area swam with hungry tourists, whiny kids pulling on them, begging for chocolate shakes and Happy Meals.
Jed said nothing, just turned and leaned his shoulder against the window to consider Conner. “You’ve been silent for the last sixty miles. Is it the kid?”
It had taken them over an hour to get back on the road, negotiate the bottled traffic, clear Duluth, and finally escape to Highway 61, the last stretch to Deep Haven, some ninety miles farther up the road.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Jed said nothing.
“Fine. The crash—it’s like I saw Justin’s ghost, rising to haunt me.” He folded his arms, shook his head, as if he could jerk himself free. “Sorry.”
Jed lifted a shoulder. “We all have ghosts.”
Conner watched a family—three kids, a wife, husband—claim a table, their Happy Meals toppling over on their tray. “I guess it just doesn’t feel right to get married, move on without settling my brother’s score. Bringing his killer to justice.”
“Didn’t you say that even the NSA couldn’t nail down the killer?”
Conner’s mouth formed a tight line. “They weren’t me.”
Jed raised an eyebrow.
Conner met his gaze, didn’t blink.
“Just one hour with the file, a computer, and my brother’s cell phone. It’s all we have to go on—all the evidence was destroyed when they burned his body. But the NSA won’t let me near it.” Just one hour to do some ethical hacking, find the digital trail. “It’s like they don’t care.”
“You didn’t betray your brother by not finding his killer,” Jed said quietly.
Conner shot him a look, because that pretty much summed it up.
“The NSA pointed the finger at someone he was working with, inside the cult. Someone named Blue. He disappeared around the same time Justin was killed. The NSA thinks he might be dead, too. My gut agrees. Justin was killed by someone in the terror organization he’d embedded.
Maybe his cover was blown...but I have so many scenarios in my head, who knows.
Believe me, I’ve spent too many nights dissecting the what-ifs. ”
Reuben came up, holding a take-out bag. “Are we having a personal crisis over here?”
Conner frowned.
“Hey, I know what it looks like to stew over something,” Reuben said.
“Something like that.” Jed checked his slip against the number just called and left to pick up his food.
Pete took his place, holding two breakfast burritos, a Coke. “Not eating, Conner?”
“He’s busy freaking out,” Reuben said.
“I agree. Marriage. Yikes.”
“It’s not—” Conner started.
“He thinks he should shut one door before opening another,” Reuben said, cutting him off.
Pete frowned. “What door? You have an old girlfriend waiting in the wings?”
“Funny. No. Unfinished business,” Conner said.
Pete unwrapped one of his burritos. “Listen, let me tell you about unfinished business. You gotta deal with it or it’ll keep hounding you—”
“Nice, Pete. That’s exactly what he needs,” Reuben said. However, “But, yeah, he’s right.”
“No, he’s not,” Conner said. “Listen, there’s nothing I can do. I’ve made peace with that. This is just a random shadow. I just gotta learn to stop jumping every time it creeps up behind me. “
Jed returned with his bag of food.
“Let’s go,” Conner said, ignoring the roil of hunger.
What he really needed was Liza. Liza, waiting for him. Liza with the way she had of listening, her ability to yank him out of his grief, turn his frustration into hope. She had a faith that he not only envied, but clung to.
It had healed him, really—so much of his fractured past nothing but deep, grooved scars that marked the byways of his walk of faith. She could help purge the image of Gunnar’s grief, the mumbling voices of his own failures, out of his brain, or at least tuck them back safely into the past.
He should have texted more than a feeble ok to her sweet words.
He pulled out his phone, unlocked it. He’d turned it off while driving and now found two missed calls, and one had left a message.
The first missed call was from his friend Jim Micah.
Funny that he should call today, of all days.
He hadn’t talked to Micah in, well, a couple years, really.
But it didn’t matter. Micah knew him better than anyone.
He should call him back, tell him the good news. Although, he probably should have invited him to the wedding, so yeah, maybe he’d save that call.
The other number took him a second—a long second—to place.
And then, oh...my...
The number he’d never deleted, unable to take that final step.
Justin’s burner phone, the one the NSA hadn’t confiscated.
Conner swallowed, his chest webbed, and headed outside, punching the voicemail code.
Bracing himself.
A woman’s voice, a little shaky, as if she’d been crying.
“Um, I hope this is you. I...I’m not sure why you’re telling me you’re getting married.
Married ? But...I don’t understand, Justin.
I thought...anyway. Um. I think they found me, because the house—it’s gone.
Someone burned it. And maybe you don’t care anymore, but I’m okay.
And I still have it, if you want it. Except. ..oh, please just call me back.”
The guys had bumped past him as Conner stilled, caught in the entry between the outer and inner doors of the restaurant. Outside, the rain had died to a drizzle.
He listened to the message again.
Same shaky voice, and yes, she’d said Justin .
Except, what was she doing with Justin’s phone ?
He glanced out at the truck, then pushed redial.
The voice answered on the first ring. “Is it you?”
“Um...”
“Oh, geez—”
“Wait—it’s Conner. Conner Young. I...um...this is my brother Justin’s number.”
More silence. “I’m sorry. Wrong number—”
“Wait! Please.” He’d raised his voice and got a look from a couple of teenage girls walking in. Cut his voice low. “Who are you?”
An intake of breath.
“Listen.” He cupped his hand over his mouth. “Justin...was murdered. Seven years ago.”
More silence.
“Please. If you know anything—”
“What was your brother’s favorite food?”
He moved aside to let a family pass, held his other hand to his ear over their chatter. “What?”
“Answer the question.”
“Peanut butter milk shakes.”
More silence.
“It’s Blue. Harmony Blue, your brother’s...friend.”
Conner stiffened, and a couple guys in letter jackets nearly plowed him over. “What—”
“I worked with him inside Sons of Freedom.”
The domestic terror cult that Justin had tried to dismantle from the inside out.
Conner swallowed, a knife in his throat. “Prove it.”
“You had a dog named Gracie. A black Lab. She died in your brother’s arms.”
The knife dropped to his chest, and now he moved outside, huddling under the awning as the rain dripped from the eaves. Blue was a woman? “The NSA said you were dead.”
“The NSA said a lot of things. None of them true. Why did you text me?”
Conner scrambled to keep up, couldn’t. “What are you talking about?”
“You texted me, about your wedding. I only turn this phone on once a month, just...I don’t know why anymore. But a day later I came home and my house was in flames.”
Across the parking lot, Jed had parked and was getting out, holding his bag of food.
“Why would—”
“Because they’re tracking my phone! Or yours. Or both, I don’t know. I just know my phone, which only one person knows the number to—or I guess, two people now—suddenly buzzes, and it’s you, inviting me to your wedding—”
“I swear I did not text you.”
“Then we’re in real trouble because someone has access to your phone. And that someone is trying to find me. Wants me dead.”
Silence.
Jed ran over and threw his garbage in the trash. Glanced at him, frowning.
“Why?”
“Why do you think? Because I know what Justin knows—knew. And it’s probably the same people who...who killed him.”
Jed came over and stood beside him.
Clearly Conner needed to work on his poker face. “Listen, Blue, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The other end of the phone was quiet for so long he thought she had hung up. “Hello?”
“I’m trying to decide if I dump this phone and walk away, or actually...” A curse on the other end. “Shoot. Are you sure Justin’s dead?”
What? “I...yeah. The NSA identified his dental records, gave me back his ring.”
He thought he heard a hiccup of breath. “Okay.”
Conner closed his eyes, remembering when his CO had called him into his office, delivered the news. The long trip home from Iraq. “I’m sorry.”
“Then he was betrayed.”
Conner managed to keep his voice from shaking. “By who?”
An intake of breath. “I’m not sure, but I have...I have something that might point in the right direction. I’m really tired of this, Conner. Of hiding. Of waiting. I want to end this.”
Now Reuben had come over as well. Apparently they were having a convention outside McDonald’s.
“Me, too,” Conner said. “But how?”
“Your brother told me you were some sort of hacker—”
“Not really—”
“Well, you’d better be, because you’re all I got.”
Reuben ran up and shot a quizzical look at Jed.