this morning. Just in case. Anyway, everybody else may be kicking you to the curb, but I’m not.”
That jolted Trace, and he looked over as Ryker took the only chair and reached for a coffee. “Why not?”
“I talked to Bill. Are you on meds?”
“I’m still waiting for it to hit.”
“Okay. Does it help?”
He met Ryker’s dark gaze and saw something very like the sympathy that had been missing last night. “Yeah, when I take enough of it.”
“Probably not often, knowing you.”
“Not when I can avoid it. What’s going on?”
Trace could feel the buzz coming, so he finished his coffee and reached for another before sitting on the edge of the bed again.
Ryker sighed and sipped more coffee, then leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankle. “I told you I talked with Bill. I was going to rake him over the coals for giving you my address, but it turns out he gave it to you for a reason.”
Trace sat up a little straighter, suppressing a wince. “What reason?”
“Apparently he thinks there’s more going on than you’ve been told and that you desperately need an ally.”
Trace felt his heart accelerate. “That’s news to me.” Important news. Something to give his full attention to. “Did he say what’s happening?”
“No. He doesn’t know.” Ryker blew a long breath and glanced at his watch. “A few more and then we go. No, he doesn’t know, but he was unhappy about it. He thinks they’ve cut you loose and don’t give a damn.”
“I was right. I’m a liability.” Instead of just wondering, now he knew, but he was damned if he knew why. So much was becoming clear, and he didn’t like it.
“My guess is you’ve passed your expiration date because of your injury, and they’re more interested in catching the tiger that’s on your tail than whether you survive it.”
“Or alternatively, they have a reason not to stop the tiger. I’ve heard of it.”
“So have I, but I’ve never known it to happen.”
“Me, neither, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You know how much butt-covering goes on.” And secrets. Secrets that only a handful might ever know. Those secrets could be good for the country, essential even, but they could also cover up more nefarious activities.
A sense of betrayal began burning in him, but this wasn’t the time to let it take over. Trace forced it down, trying to clear his head, suddenly wishing he hadn’t taken the pain pill. It wouldn’t help at all, not right now. What good would it do him to ease his hand when his brain would be in low gear?
“We’ve got some time. Bill never told anyone he directed you to me, and I talked to him on a scrambled line this morning.”
“You have one?” Trace hadn’t expected that, given that Ryker had hung up his spurs. That technology was doled out very carefully.
“Better believe it. When I resigned, I still had a lot of useful stuff in my brain. They want to pick it occasionally. Think they’re going to trust the phone company with that? Or that I would? Hell, we don’t even let the NSA eavesdrop on our lines.”
But another thought had occurred to Trace and it made him sick. “I got your address on an unsecure line. I’d better leave now. I don’t want your family at risk.”
“Well...” Ryker’s eyes twinkled unexpectedly. “The conversation I had with Bill this morning wasn’t exactly as straightforward as I reported. We talked sideways on purpose. I gave Bill a helluva lecture about revealing my whereabouts, and I told him I’d sent you on your way this morning. So if anybody was listening, I sounded p.o.’d, Bill sounded apologetic and loosely explanatory, and in theory you’re already on the road. We’re gonna need to get your car out of town along with the phone, though. You okay to drive?”
“Yeah.” Trace started smiling. His head was getting into the game again. He guessed he’d been missing a sense of purpose. And it felt good not to be alone for the first time in a few weeks. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a junkyard a few hundred miles from here?”
“Well, I do happen to know just the right guy to get a car towed a long, long way.”
* * *
An unreasonable curiosity dragged Julie off her usual path to the elementary school and past the motel. Trace’s car was still there, but probably wouldn’t be for long. Then she got a jolt as she saw Ryker exit the room with the guy. What was going on?
Down the street a way, she pulled over to the curb and watched her rearview mirror. For some reason Ryker dashed across the state highway into the truck stop parking lot. A few minutes later he dashed back. She saw him wave toward the center of the town, then jog up the street to where his car was parked.
What the heck? It was like a scene out of some spy movie, she thought, almost laughing at herself. Why in the world would Ryker park up the street instead of in the motel lot? Shaking her head as questions percolated in her mind, she started to put her car in gear. As she looked to the side she found Ryker pulling up beside her. He was lowering his window, so she touched the button to lower hers.
“Julie,” he said.
“Ryker. What...”
He interrupted her. “Whatever you just saw, forget it. Completely. Curiosity and the cat. You read me?”
Astonished, she gaped at him, feeling her head bob agreement. “I never saw a thing,” she said when she could find her voice.
He smiled. “Good. Just keep Marisa in mind.”
Then he pulled away, leaving her with more questions than ever. Eventually she pulled out, remembering that twenty-two children would be piling into her classroom very soon. But she didn’t want to think about those kids.
She wanted to think about what had just happened and what it might mean, and why he was concerned about Marisa.
No matter how many times she told herself to just forget it, as Ryker had warned her, the questions kept percolating in her mind. Somehow she had to find out what was going on.
Determined that she would, she entered her classroom smiling.
* * *
Ryker had told Trace just last night to lie low. Walking into a busy sheriff’s office hardly struck Trace as staying low. It actually seemed quite high-profile. His nerves began to crawl.
No names were exchanged. The wizened woman at the dispatcher’s desk, who squinted at them through a cloud of smoke that issued from the illicit cigarette dangling from one corner of her mouth, merely jerked her head toward the back.
Trace followed Ryker down a hallway to an open door that had the word Sheriff stenciled on the frosted glass top. Inside a man with a burn-scarred face sat behind the desk, his khaki uniform neatly pressed. He spoke without rising.
“Hey,
