Trust No One

Book 1: Mac Davis

by L.J. Breedlove

Genres: Political Thrillers; Suspense; Vigilante Thrillers; suspense; Veteran; political intrigue; multicultural; thriller; vigilante justice; newspaper; reporter

Synopsis

Howard Parker wants to be Secretary of Homeland Security, and he's not letting some punk Marines stand in his way, even if one is now a reporter in his hometown of Seattle.
Mac Davis likes being a reporter. No one shoots at him, he eats real meals regularly -- what's not to like? Then someone kidnaps his friends, and tries to kill him. Mac doesn't know who or why, but he plans to find out. And make them pay.
Book 1 in the Mac Davis thriller series.

Release date: March 31, 2013

Print pages: 298

Sample

Prologue

 

Somewhere in the Southwest (May, 2005) — The Marine fire team hadn’t been together very long: two 18 year-old’s fresh out of training camp waiting to go somewhere — anywhere but here, muttered Danny Brown, a Bayou kid who had no taste for the dry heat of the Southwest — plus a transfer from Missouri and a team leader with two years of experience at not quite 20. Team leader Mackensie Davis thought the heat of El Paso beat Afghanistan any day.

“We’re supposed to be looking for weed?” Troy Maxim asked in a loud whisper, when the four were told they were one of the many teams loaned to the Drug Enforcement Agency for a sweep. “Shh-it,” he said, dragging out the sounds to two syllables. Maxim was a tall, broad-shouldered black man whose parents were both doctors in Chicago. His street talk fell flat, but no one laughed any more. He’d shown a couple of white boys that being from the ‘burbs didn’t prevent him from whupping their asses.

John Blankenship said nothing. He rarely did; the Marine Corps was a family business. His father and both older brothers were Marines. He planned to make a career of it. If the Marine Corps wanted him to look for marijuana fields, he’d look for marijuana fields. His last post in Missouri had been recruitment; he was glad for something a bit more active.

Mac Davis snorted. He would search for weed, although he figured they’d find as much weed back on base, most certainly in town. Not a little of it belonged to him.

“Not just marijuana,” the DEA agent said irritably. “Although we’re talking plantations here, not a couple of pot plants and a grow light. There are meth labs, coke warehouses, you name it, along the border. They mule the raw ingredients in from Mexico, process it here, and sell it in New York, Chicago and Dallas. We want to interrupt that flow.”

Davis nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, with just enough drawl to be a bit insulting. The DEA agent glared at him, but didn’t fall into the trap of chewing out someone for saying yes sir.

“We’ll drop you in, you can hump your way out to a pick-up point here,” the agent traced the route on the mission map. The land he pointed to was a hilly region west of El Paso, east and south of Roswell, New Mexico. Isolated, bleak, described as rolling hills with a few trees, but only if you considered pinion a tree. It was mostly rocks, canyons, dry land, and some ranches barely making it on grazing. The only industries — drugs and wetbacks.

“Plot and record,” the agent emphasized. “We don’t expect you to make arrests, or in any way let your presence be known. Some of those places are well defended. We’ll send in more power than small teams of Marines to clean out the places you identify. This is a low-profile, recon mission, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” the four chorused. No one mentioned the additional reason: it wasn’t popular to broadcast that Marines were operating on American soil. The citizens at home might get uncomfortable about that.

“0600,” the agent said and dismissed them. Just kids, he thought, shaking his head. Four big, overgrown kids. With weapons. He shook his head again. He was dumping a dozen teams into a 100 square mile area. He just hoped they didn’t shoot each other.

 

Day four. Troy Maxim and Mac Davis studied the map. It was an easy thing to say back in a city to locate drug operations on a map; another thing in rough country to even know where you were much less write it down.

Not that they were writing everything down. The team had agreed early on that pot fields under a certain size could be ignored. If some white dude was working a bunch of illegals on a large field, they wrote it down. If someone was running a manufacturing plant for meth or crack, they logged it.

“Can’t come back with an empty map, man,” John Blankenship pointed out.

 “How can you eat this shit?” Danny Brown said, poking through his Meal Ready to Eat — MRE — and looking disgusted. The four of them had been spread out over a small hillside that shielded them from view. They’d hiked most of the night until they’d found a spot they could blend into, defend themselves if necessary. A couple of hours of sleep and they regrouped to plan an early morning exploration. Even in May, the heat could reach the mid-80s.

 “I learned early to eat what was available,” Mac said levelly. “I suggest you learn it too.” No one said anything. The fire team was close; but no one was close enough to Mac Davis to ask questions. He was a mystery even to his best friends. He was tough, he was cold, and so far no one had bested him.

Davis was six-foot-two and built from two years in the Marine Corps — his first tour of duty in Afghanistan had bronzed his skin. He had medium dark hair — what the Marines had left of it — and a skin color that defied racial categories. He marked white on the forms, but under the heavy sun, he’d darkened to a TexMex tan. He passed for Mexican in border bars, until he spoke. His border Spanglish couldn’t pass for white, much less brown, a buddy said good-naturedly. But then Mac didn’t talk much.

He smoked Newports, listened to rap music — rhymes with crap music, Danny had muttered once — hung out with the black guys from San Diego and East St. Louis. He might have been black, but for the clear gray eyes. The black guys called him Shadow. Mac never explained why.

He was a good source for booze, weed, or whatever. And when he went in to town, he seemed to know every girl there. None of the girls seemed to find his cold eyes, or the grim lines around his mouth to be as frightening as his fire team did. But then, even his buddies agreed that when he smiled, the lines weren’t so grim, and the eyes weren’t so cold.

His team would follow him anywhere; they’d already found out that the safest place to be in a brawl was at his side. But they didn’t understand him, and they didn’t ask questions.

The four shouldered into their packs and followed Mac away from their camp. It looked like no one had been there.

There was an area to the south of them Mac wanted to check out. It was a bit off their assigned route, but not much. He’d seen some trails the day before that looked like they were made by men, not by whatever passed for a deer in this area. He had an itch; the team agreed to check it out.

Mac led the way at a dogtrot. He wanted to cover some territory early in the day before it got hot. He traced his route back to the trail. A good 60 paces south, it forked. Mac gestured Danny and Troy take the east trail, he and John headed west. His instincts were on full alert, although he couldn’t say why. Even so, he almost ran over the top of the two men with a radio unit before he saw them.

The land was deceiving; it looked wide open — clear to the horizon where bleached brown met bright blue. Truth was the land was gutted with canyons and pocked with rugged outcroppings of rock. Hard to see what was right before you; it didn’t seem right that it was equally hard to find cover when you needed it.

Mac dove for cover in a small swale with John close behind him. Too late to fade away. The two men, mid-30s and fit, whirled, and one fired. The shot came close enough that Mac heard it go by.

Mac sprayed the area with his M-203, an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher below the regular barrel, while John Blankenship tried to raise the other two on a hand-held.

“Where the hell are you,” Danny’s voice came back. “We’re in trouble here!”

Mac gestured at John to shut the thing off. He had the two pinned down, but they weren’t acting scared. It might be a case of who had whom pinned, Mac thought. He motioned to Blankenship to return fire, pulled a 9mm out of its holster, slung the M-203 across his back, and half crawled and slid across the ground following the contour of the land, hoping that sagebrush was a better cover than it looked.

Mac felt himself mentally switch into the mindset of a hunter. Something inside him settled in, tightened. His senses seemed more alert; he could hear more, smell more. He made little sound normally; now he made even less.

He eased from one shadow to another, blending with the sparse vegetation and rocks. He moved in close, not stopping until he could hear them.

“We’ve got problems,” one said into his radio. “Some fuckers in drab just walked over us. Fire is being exchanged. Got that? Fire is being exchanged.”

Mac waited until there was a pause in the radio conversation, thwack. The slug caught the man in the throat, blood spurted out through the jugular. When his partner whirled to see where the shot came from, firing as he looked, Mac was no longer there. Blankenship put a round in his back.

Mac paused, wishing there was time to search the lookouts. He started south and John fell in behind him.

“Who were those fuckers?” Blankenship panted. “Drug makers with radios and perimeter men?”

Mac didn’t reply. He was breathing easily, focused on the path ahead of him. He didn’t know enough, but the man’s communication worried at him. Trouble, he thought. We’ve bought ourselves a whole bunch of trouble.

“Aren’t we going to help Danny and Troy?” Blankenship added.

“See if they’re broadcasting,” Mac said softly, but kept moving. John turned the radio on low, listening intently.

“Mac, you got to come get us,” Danny said scared. He sounded as if he’d been repeating himself. Forgot every radio protocol he knew, Mac thought disgustedly. “They’ve got eight men out here; Tory’s been hit, not bad, but I can’t get him out alone. What the hell is going on? I didn’t see anything, and then they were firing at us. They are uphill from us, you hear? We are dead meat, man, if you don’t get here soon. Come get us.”

Mac motioned for John to turn it off. “He’s talking on that thing and firing at the same time?” John asked, keeping his voice low. “I knew Danny didn’t ever stop talking, but this is a new record even for him.”

Danny was a sharpshooter bar none, or they wouldn’t have lasted this long, Mac thought. For all his down home, good ol’ boy ways that set Mac’s teeth on edge, there was no one he’d rather have with him in a firefight. Troy wasn’t bad either. But the odds weren’t good.

“We’ve got to pull those men off. Won’t get far hitting them head on. Got to give them something more important to do.”

“Like what?” John asked.

Mac grinned. It made John veer away warily. “We burn their barn.”

Mac kept heading south. He figured if his two attackers and this other team were perimeter, it stood to reason that what they were defending was not far away. He had to be close. If he’d guessed wrong.... Mac set his jaw grimly. Then without much warning, the ravine opened into a small valley. Mac stopped and dropped. He looked at his watch, 10 minutes since they’d hit those two dudes with the radio. Come on Danny, Mac thought, hold them just a bit longer.

 In the clearing ahead was a large barn, a house, several outbuildings. Normally it probably looked like a small ranch, but now, men were running all over the place, loading vehicles, grabbing weapons. Mac watched with narrowed eyes. It was fucked, he thought, something’s not right.

“More than pot,” John observed.

“Shit, yeah,” Mac said. He moved warily around rim of the valley until he was directly behind the largest structure. Now that he was closer, he could see the barn was sturdier than it first looked. Someone had carefully added the weathered wood to look like a barn, but no animal had ever been invited in for a hay dinner, Mac thought sardonically.

“How we going to fire that thing?” John asked anxiously.

Mac grinned again. It wasn’t any more comforting than the first time. “That, my friend, is a cocaine plant. Do you know how cocaine is made?”

Blankenship shook his head. Hell, he was still afraid to drink a beer, being underage and all. What did he know about cocaine? But he could believe that Mac knew more about it than he should.

Mac eyed the building. It took heat to make cocaine. Lots of heat. He shouldered out of his pack and stashed it in the underbrush. He unslung his M-203. Blankenship watched without understanding. But he didn’t ask. He figured Mac would tell him when he was ready. Or not.

“Okay,” Mac said. “If I get spotted, you send down a round of fire and then head up that hill. You got to get out of here, call for a pickup — don’t come after me, you hear?”

Blankenship nodded. “I don’t have the big radio,” he pointed out. Troy carried the main set that the team used to make reports back to HQ roughly every 24 hours by a pre-determined schedule.

“Yeah, you’re going to have to work your way over to team four. They’re about 20 miles due west of here. You get within range of them, they can call for backup.”

Blankenship frowned. “That’s going to be too late to help much,” he objected.

Mac looked at him levelly. “You won’t be going for help,” he said. “You’re going after a team to clean up these fuckers. And bury us deep, you hear?”

Blankenship swallowed hard. He nodded. The two men they’d surprised were the first he’d ever seen die. The first he’d killed; hell, the first time he’d shot at a real human being.

Mac nodded once. He studied the field and the building again, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d set the state record for the 100 meter a couple of years ago; he hoped he still could. He darted down the hill, going for speed not stealth. Everyone was too busy to pay much attention. Apparently, they weren’t expecting company.

Figured your perimeter could handle it, hey? Mac thought grimly. He flattened himself against the wall of the barn. He could hear shouting inside, more trucks getting ready to leave. He shook his head. It didn’t make sense, he thought, then shrugged it off. He slid along the building until he was at a window near the cooking plant. He balanced his weapon on the windowsill, took aim and fired off a grenade into the furnace. He was off at a run further south to a spot he’d already identified as his next observation point.

He heard a shout, and then shots. He dropped to the ground, flattened as best he could, and looked over his shoulder. Three men were starting up the hill toward Blankenship’s position.

Shit, Mac thought. He stayed down. John should be hightailing it up that hill, he hoped, if the dump fuck didn’t fuckin’ wait around for Mac.

When no sounds of capture or even shots being fired, Mac looked around. Should be a generator around somewhere, he thought.

 

 

Washington, D.C.

May 2005

 

“We’ve got a call for Howard Parker, sir, is he still with you?” the switchboard operator asked.

“Yes, he is,” said Jake Dugan, assistant to the Secretary of Defense. “Put it through.”

Howard Parker reached for the phone set. “Parker,” he said curtly. “What? Hold on a bit.”

He gestured toward the speakerphone. “You’re going to want to hear this, too,” Parker said. “Okay, Agent Barantoski, start again.”

“Yes, sir. It seems one of the DEA agents heard some rumors about drug activity in a certain part of his region and borrowed a platoon of Marines to quarter, search and report. One fire team stumbled upon our perimeter men this morning. Two Marines were trapped on the northeast corner, but two others were able to penetrate the perimeter after a shoot-out with two men on the northwest corner. The two Marines proceeded into the facility. The furnace exploded, followed by the generator.”

Agent Barantoski paused for breath. “Go on,” Parker said. Dugan looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“One of the Marines trapped by our men was able to get a call out for backup. At that point we were alerted to the situation and were able to be among those who responded. At the facility, we found a Marine corporal in charge; he had the wetba... illegal workers sitting alongside the house with their hands on their heads. Four of our men were under guard by two other Marines. The fourth Marine was resting with a leg injury.”

Parker said with deceptive mildness, “And the other eight of our men?”

The sound of the agent swallowing was clearly audible. “Four are dead, sir. Two were able to load the jeep with incriminating evidence and get out; they’ve reported in. The whereabouts of the other two is unknown at this time.”

“I see.”

Agent Barantoski blurted out, “Sir, you’ve got to get back here A-SAP and take over damage control. We’ve got people who aren’t in the know making decisions, and all hell is breaking loose.”

“I’m on my way, Agent Barantoski,” Parker said. “Have someone waiting for me at the airport. Slow things down as much as you can. And get those Marines back on base!”

“Yes, sir!”

Dugan burst out laughing, not the least intimidated by Parker’s glare. “Four Marines, hey? Makes you proud of the old unit, doesn’t?”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had to be back here in D.C. politicking,” Parker grumbled.

Dugan sobered. “If you hadn’t been back here politicking, the new Secretary would have pulled your plug and then where would your operation be?”

Parker rolled his eyes but didn’t disagree. “It’s a hell of a thing anyway, lobbying for a project selling drugs.”

“It keeps an information pipeline open that we all need,” Dugan said.

“I know.” Parker was silent for a moment, then shook his head and sighed. “Pointless to argue about it. We’ve got the operation going; it’s my job to see it successful.”

“Just out of curiosity, how many people did we have on site?” Dugan asked.

“Four CIA agents, eight contracts, and apparently four illegal workers,” Parker said sourly. “Scramble me a jet, Jake, and then you get to go tell the Secretary that his discreet little intelligence operation just got a little less discreet.”

Dugan waved him on, but as Parker closed the door behind him, he could hear Dugan humming “From the halls of Montezuma....”

Parker opened the door back up. “And ship those Marines to the Gulf or wherever they might likely get blown to bits, will you?”

 

CHAPTER 1

Washington, D.C. (Nov. 15, 2012) — The man behind the desk continued to read a document, ignoring the aide who had just entered the room. Howard Parker at 59 was successful, powerful. You didn’t get -- or keep -- that kind of power or success by being friendly. Power kept was power used. He believed it firmly, practiced on small occasions like this, wasn’t afraid to use it when it needed to be used on larger occasions either.

The aide cleared his throat. He was used to the treatment and started in without waiting for acknowledgment. “We’ve received the report from the security firm,” he began. The man showed no interest. “The report shows no blemishes. Your background checks out as clean as they’ve ever seen.”

The man looked up at that point. “They did a thorough job?”

The aide shrugged. “They vet corporate bigwigs for companies all the time. Background checks are their main income. My guess is that if they say you’re clean, the FBI won’t find a thing either.”

“It isn’t your guess I want to hear,” the man said, stressing the word guess.

“No, sir.” The aide cleared his throat again. “There is one thing, however. An aide to Senator Murray from Chicago has been asking questions.”

The man frowned. “What kind of questions?”

The aide shook his head. “Just asking about you, whether your name was coming up for anything in the next cabinet. The questions got back to us.”

“Chicago? Murray? She’s not a player. Why would an aide of hers being nosing around? Who is he?”

“Some young guy named Troy Maxim.” The aide shrugged. “Could be a supporter of yours. Although working for Murray...” His thoughts trailed off. Murray was as liberal as they came, not likely to be a fan of his boss. “But he was in the Marines, I believe -- he may know you.”

The man frowned, tapping his fingers on the edge of his desk. He turned to his computer, typed in a name in a search prompt, and punched in the number that appeared into the phone. He asked the person on the other end a question and waited impatiently for an answer. When it came, he grunted, then jotted down four names and handed it to his aide.

The aide looked at the list. Troy Maxim was at the top.

“Check these four out. Start with the Marines, see if the others are still in. I want to know where they are now, what they’re doing. Top priority, you understand?”

The aide nodded his head. “Yes, sir.” He didn’t ask questions. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what his boss was doing.

Howard Parker leaned back in his chair and stared out the window. “I want that nomination,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” the aide said.

 

The preliminary report on the four was alarming, Parker thought. How the hell could one person be in the wrong place at the wrong time so frequently?

He dismissed John Blankenship as a potential problem. He was still in the Marines, doing embassy duty in Saudi. Danny Brown was a wildcatter on an oilrig off the coast of Louisiana. Not a real threat, although Parker ordered a profile to be developed on him just in case.

But the other two. God Almighty.

Troy Maxim, son of well-to-do doctors in Chicago, graduate of Northwestern, aide to the notoriously liberal, anti-military Senator Abigail Murray.

“I want to know all about him,” Parker said to his former protégé, now at the FBI, who had brought the report in. “Who are his friends, where he lives, who he sleeps with. I want to know any dirt, any possible ways of getting a handle on this kid.”

“He’s nearly 30,” the FBI agent said mildly. “Not a kid.”

Parker ignored the comment; he was looking at the summary of the fourth person on his list. He shook his head in disbelief.

“And this one. A goddam reporter? For the Seattle Examiner? In my own back yard!” Parker stabbed the preliminary report with his finger at each damning detail. He turned to his computer Rolodex, searching for a name. “Donnelly. There’s a police detective out there in Seattle who owes me a favor or two. I’ll get with him. Have him dig. We have to be prepared to bury this guy. A damn reporter!”

The FBI agent frowned. “Aren’t you over-reacting? I can see tracking this Maxim guy but profiling a reporter can come back and bite you in the ass.”

“You don’t understand,” Parker said. “And I can’t tell you the details. Trust me. This isn’t just a matter of my political future, but also of national security. We have to be ready to move quickly to contain any problem here.”

The FBI agent stood up. “I’ll get it going,” he said.

“Get 24-hour surveillance on Maxim ASAP.”

“Got it.”

Parker nodded. He waited until the agent had closed the door behind him, then leaned back and closed his eyes for a brief moment. He opened them, looking around his office as if for the first time.

The office was spacious, a fourth-floor corner window office of an anonymous government building in Foggy Bottom. One wall had photos of important people, awards and commendations and medals. The other wall was filled with shelves of books. Nothing personal. No pictures of his wife or son. No sports trophies. Or vacation souvenirs. He snorted.

His title was as bland as the building, a national security analyst for the Department of Defense, although his office was actually part of the State Department complex. The title did nothing to reveal the power he pulled. He looked out the window. Lights were coming on over the city.

Parker shut down his computer, carefully locked his desk. He shrugged into his wool overcoat, and went to the outer office, locking his door behind him. His aide had already left for the night. Parker locked the outer door as well, then took the stairs to the ground floor.

On impulse he took the Metro to the Mall, walked to the Lincoln Memorial. It never failed to move him. In spite of all his personal problems, Abraham Lincoln had taken care of his country. Parker approved of that.

He turned toward the Capitol walking briskly in the early evening. The Washington Monument loomed over the Reflecting Pool. A few people were out, but not many. It was cold, in a brisk way, but no snow. None of D.C.’s ugly winter yet. All the years he’d been here, he still hated the winters. At least in Seattle the snow had the decency to stay in the mountains where it could be admired and occasionally visited.

He smiled at his own whimsy. For all the horrible winters and the sweltering, humid summers, there was no place to be but here. This was the most powerful city in the most powerful country of the world.

I have served this country all my life, he thought wonderingly. Politics and the military had always swirled around him; his family had been involved in both for generations -- that and dairy farming. Back in those days military and politics were pretty much the same in the Washington state, thanks to Scoop Jackson and men like him. Men like himself, he thought.

Then ROTC at University of Washington. Then the Marines. A command in SE Asia. Back to the states. Various posts, but here was home. D.C. was where he belonged. He retired from the Marines at the end of his 20, went to work for the CIA, then back over to the DOD.

Nominated for Secretary of Homeland Security. He smiled. He wanted the power, he could taste it, but more than that, he wanted to accomplish the things he could do with that power. For the country. Patriotism might have gone out of favor, he thought, but he was a patriot and proud to be so.

 All the things he had done, those he could talk about and those he never would, he’d done for the country. Including the operation that had gone so tits up. He shook his head, pulled out his cell phone.

“Yo.”

“Make sure you’ve got a watch on Maxim 24/seven. He’s got to be watched. His phone tapped. If he starts to go public, we need to know immediately. No delays.”

“Got it.”

Parker continued on his walk, faster now, headed toward the next Metro station, and home to Fairfax. His wife would have dinner waiting. Or the cook would. He couldn’t remember if Sarah was here or in Seattle. It didn’t matter. He walked on.

 

Someone was watching him — he was sure of it. Troy Maxim tried not to walk too fast, to not look over his shoulder. A mugger? A police officer wondering what a black guy was doing in this part of Georgetown?

I live here, damn it, he thought angrily. He might be better off in Adams Morgan or some part of town where blacks were more common. But he liked the nightlife of Georgetown. He’d only been questioned by an officer once. It just freaked him out, that was all. He loitered in front of a store window to let whoever was back there catch up. No one did. He looked back, casually, he hoped. No one. Troy didn’t find that reassuring. He was being followed, he was sure of it. If the person was staying out of sight, it meant.... Troy stiffened a bit.

Am I paranoid? he wondered. There had been odd looks among other Senate aides and staff members. People asking for him at his apartment complex but not leaving names. He walked faster, his hands in his pockets. He wished for a weapon. Senate aides were not supposed to be armed, weren’t supposed to need a weapon.

He let himself into the foyer of his apartment complex. The security guard nodded to him. “Cold tonight,” he said. “Snow maybe?”

Troy smiled. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It’s not that cold.”

The guard shrugged. “We had someone try to get in again, earlier,” he said. “Seems like if they’re thieves, they’d find easier pickings.”

Troy hesitated. “Tried how?”

“Tried to come in through the parking garage. Pretty good at it, actually. Avoided the cameras, all the way to the elevator. But they didn’t have a key there, so the alarm went off.” The guard shrugged again. “They were gone before we got down there. Almost professional.”

“Not as good as you guys,” Troy tried to joke. His voice seemed to clog in his throat.

The guard smiled. “We hope.”

Troy took the elevator to his fourth-floor, one-bedroom apartment. He liked the space, plenty for one man. Especially for a man who had gone from Marines to dorm room to here.

Another attempt to get in the building. Troy shook his head. It didn’t have to have anything to do with him; there were probably a hundred people in this building. He felt a chill along the back of his neck just the same.

He flipped on the lights; the light on his answering machine was blinking. He hit replay.

The first was from his mom. He would call her back a bit later. The second from a woman he’d been seeing -- she hoped she’d see him sometime this week? He hesitated, not sure he wanted to continue seeing her. Or was the paranoia eating at him? Making him a hermit.

The third message was from a voice he didn’t recognize. There was no name given. “Listen. You’ve been asking questions you don’t need to ask, about a man who doesn’t need you asking questions. Stop. We will be watching you. If we have to be more convincing, your family lives in Chicago. Your grandmother lives outside Atlanta. We can get them. We can get you.”

Troy swallowed. He hit replay, listened to the message again. Listened to it a third time. It wasn’t a prank, he thought. It was real. Someone wanted him to stop asking questions. The only questions he’d asked lately -- beyond do you want three copies of this or four -- were about Howard Parker’s name being mentioned for the Department of Homeland Security.

The phone rang. He jumped. Hesitated, then answered it.