Once Quiet (Jack Widow Book 5) Read online

She looked at him, dumbfounded.

  “Ma’am, people use this road to go to work. You were driving slow in the passing lane. Please use the right lane. The slow lane. It’s posted on signs that you drove past. And you drove slow enough to read them.”

  She smiled. And said, “I’m sorry, officer. I’ll speed up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can I go?”

  “Ma’am, the FBI does important work. Whatever it is you’re going to, I’m sure your bosses want you there quickly. So by all means, hit the gas. Take off.”

  Escobar smiled and buzzed up her window. She tossed her badge on the seat next to her and hit the gas. She watched the dust kick up and the trooper decrease in size in her side mirror until she was far ahead of him.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE IDAHO STATE TROOPER watched the FBI Agent drive away.

  He almost waved, but thought that would make him appear lame. He had never seen an FBI agent before. He might see one again, but he was positive that he would never pull one over again.

  He chuckled to himself about what the other guys would say. Or even if they would believe him. Even if he used the dash cam, they might not believe him. The cam doesn’t prove anything. He never showed the badge to it.

  Suddenly, the trooper heard a BOOM! that sounded like a gunshot, which he realized it was about a half second later, because he felt a hard push like a grenade had exploded and swept him off his feet.

  He toppled over like a ragdoll and hit the pavement with his knees, while his head hit the grass, just on the border of the shoulder and Idaho’s vast, lonely potato country.

  The trooper reached up to his face and felt the cold, wet blood.

  He twisted as best he could and looked back. He saw blood and slivers of skin and his ear. They were on the edge of the concrete. His ear dangled off the border and the grass.

  That was when he knew that a bullet had exploded through half his face and the side of his cheek and ear had exploded off him.

  He didn’t reach for the hole in the back of his head, right at the top of his brainstem, but he knew it was there. He had been shot in the back of the head with a forty-caliber Glock. And it had been an impressive shot because it was from twenty yards away.

  He didn’t know that information and he never would.

  The trooper’s police training and experience were telling him to go for his gun. The human instinct was telling him to clutch the holes in his head. In the end, millions of years of human nature won.

  Judd had been in the SEAL teams with Qatal and he had worked with him on the mercenary market for years. He knew how to sneak up on people.

  He stepped out of the brush across the road. He had parked his motorcycle back in the tall wheat, just off the highway. He had followed Escobar all the way from Seattle.

  She had been driving so slowly, that he had decided to stay behind at the last stop for gas. He didn’t want her making him, which would’ve been easy to do on a nearly deserted Idaho highway.

  He saw the police cruiser eyeballing her before she even knew the trooper was there.

  Judd walked up and stopped in front of the trooper’s car. He looked both ways, up the highway and down it. No one was in sight. Not one car.

  Judd bent down and stared over the trooper. He said, “You dead?”

  No answer.

  Judd grinned.

  He holstered his Glock and walked back over to the state trooper’s police cruiser. He got in, made a mental note to keep track of everything he touched. He knew that the trooper had left his police computer open. That was SOP when pulling over a car, gave the cop quicker access to the database. He took a look at his last entries.

  The trooper had entered the government plate, which was good. Judd wanted there to be a record.

  He reached up and grabbed the dash camera. He had to destroy it because it would show that Escobar drove away. He would appear on it as well. So, he tried to jerk it and pull it, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked back. No one was coming.

  He pointed the Glock at the dash cam and shot it—twice.

  It shattered and splintered and exploded into little pieces. Most dash cams report their feedback to the local stations. All on a secure server, but this was a state trooper. His local station was a hundred miles away and there was no internet out here. No phone service either. The odds were that it was all recorded in a memory card embedded in the cam itself.

  Judd drove the police cruiser over to the dying trooper. He popped the trunk and got out. He checked the trooper’s vitals, even though that was far from necessary. The guy was dead. But Judd was a thorough type of guy.

  He dragged the trooper’s body over to the trunk and tossed him in. Then he checked the highway again. Can’t be too careful. Still there was no one.

  He looked around and saw that to the south there were more tall fields of wheat stalks or whatever it was. He wasn’t exactly sure. He just knew that it was farm country.

  He shut off the police light bar and drove the car slowly off the highway and out into the field. Then, he parked it as far as he could out of sight.

  It took him about five minutes to cover the car up with as much of the broken stalks of wheat as he could. Then he locked the whole thing and threw the keys as hard as he could.

  Judd watched as they twisted and flipped in the sunlight until he lost track of them far away in the wheat stalks.

  He smiled.

  It took about another five minutes for him to walk back to the bike.

  He took one last scan of the highway. He saw a truck in the distance headed his way, but it was far off. Too far to make a fuss about. The driver would have to have been looking through a telescope to have seen all that just transpired there.

  Judd got his bike started. The engine roared and the tires kicked up dirt and grass and he jerked up out of the wheat and back onto the blacktop.

  Back on Escobar’s trail.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE NEXT DAY, King and Miranda were the first people awake, and then Widow.

  Widow joined King at the long bar in the kitchen. King was reading a newspaper, a New York Times, which struck Widow as a little odd. He wasn’t sure what was more out of place, the fact that King was reading it or that there was a Times way out in cattle country.

  He didn’t ask about it.

  Widow sat on the stool next to King.

  Miranda asked, “Señor Widow, you want coffee?”

  “Always.”

  Miranda turned and poured him a cup out of a pot that was still steaming. She handed it to him.

  Widow stayed quiet and took a pull from the mug. He made a yummy sound. Which she seemed to appreciate.

  Miranda asked, “You want breakfast?”

  “What do you have?”

  “I make eggs and bacon and toast.”

  “Then I’ll have that too.”

  Miranda turned and went to work preparing his breakfast like she was in her office.

  Widow sipped the coffee and stayed quiet.

  After a moment, King said, “You talk to the miss?”

  “You addressing me?”

  “Yeah. Who else I be talking to?”

  Widow said, “If you mean Mrs. Sossaman, no, I haven’t talked to her today.”

  “She talk to you yesterday?”

  “She did.”

  “What time you headed out?”

  Widow drank more of his coffee. Then he asked, “You ready for me to get out already?”

  “Nah. I’m not trying to be inhospitable or nothing,” King said. He turned the page on the newspaper and folded it over and stared at the other side.

  King was a big man in a big-boned kind of way. He wasn’t muscular or even bulky, but he had wide shoulders and long arms and long legs.

  Widow said, “I’ll be off today. Just gotta handle some business.”

  King said, “That’s good.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  King said, “All I aim is that this family is
safe. That’s all. Don’t take it personal.”

  “I won’t.”

  CHAPTER 37

  AFTER BREAKFAST, Widow saw Casey and Carson show their faces for a bit and then Carson went off to play outside.

  Crispin signed to Carson before he went out.

  Widow wondered what she had said. He imagined it was something like “Don’t go too far from the house,” and “Be careful out there,” and “Don’t get your clothes dirty.”

  He watched Crispin kiss Carson on the head and then the boy ran out to play.

  Casey was a different story. He had spent the morning trailing behind Widow, trying to talk to him about stuff that interested him, trying to bond.

  Widow obliged until Crispin finally said, “Okay. You two. Casey. Go help Mr. King.”

  Casey said, “Mom, do I have to?”

  She said, “Yes, Casey. Do as you are told.”

  Casey looked at Widow with pleading in his eyes, like a son would a father. Which was exactly what Widow thought. Then his mind drifted to his own father—a total stranger.

  Widow said, “Check you later, Casey.”

  That made Casey smile and he ran out the door. Off to the barn to meet with King, who probably lived there. Widow had never slept in a barn before. He guessed that King’s quarters weren’t literally in the barn. They were probably in an apartment off to the side or above it.

  Once, Widow had slept in a cave in Afghanistan. His SEAL team was sent in to capture a Taliban fighter. The guy had specific information that the Navy wanted. Although, Widow knew it was more like info the CIA wanted.

  What the information turned out to be, he had no idea.

  When they found an empty cave above a passage in the mountains, his team took advantage of it. The Taliban fighter wasn’t supposed to pass through their way for another twelve hours. They took turns sleeping throughout the night.

  Widow waited for Casey to leave and then he walked over to Crispin.

  She wore blue jeans and a white shirt that was about the thinnest material that he had ever seen. But everything was covered.

  The sleeves were short. He could make out the slender shoulders beneath. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that looked like it was put together by a team of professionals, even though it was supposed to look effortless.

  Widow walked close to her.

  She asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to use the phone,” he said, and pointed at the house phone that was on the bar.

  Crispin looked up at him and said, “Right. Well, you’d better do it. I’m going to go get ready.”

  “Ready?”

  “I need to go into town.”

  “What’s wrong with the way you look now?”

  “It’s too much. Don’t you think?”

  “Too much?”

  She looked down her face at her shirt. Widow wondered if she saw her chest the same way that he saw it—as something spectacular. Then he felt stupid for the thought and guessed that probably no woman did.

  She said, “Or too little. I guess that’s the real way to put it.”

  Widow stayed quiet. He figured that the best comment was no comment.

  Crispin said, “The townspeople are very nice here, but the men, they give me looks. Then the women. They give me different looks. Because the men give me looks I guess.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I’ve been here since Casey was born. So about fourteen years.”

  “The local people still give you looks?” He asked the question, but then he realized that he would still be giving her looks as well. He didn’t foresee any man being able to resist.

  “Not all of them. Most of the women are nice to me. I don’t go into town often. Mr. King usually goes.”

  “Why’s he not going for you this time?”

  “He’s gotta take Casey out today. I can’t do the work on the ranch. So I have to go into town. Of course, Miranda will go too.”

  Widow nodded.

  She smiled and said, “You can use the phone.”

  She turned to walk away and then she said, “Thanks, Mr. Widow.”

  Widow said, “Don’t change. You look fine to me. Ignore the people who stare.”

  She nodded and left.

  It took Widow a couple of seconds to realize that he was watching her go. Not common for him to leer. He turned and went to the phone. Picked it up out of a cradle and sat on one of the barstools. He listened for a dial tone and dialed his bank’s number.

  A voice came on and said, “Hello,” and welcomed him to his bank’s number.

  Widow said, “Can I speak with someone in your security department.”

  “Is this regarding fraudulent charges?”

  “Sort of. It’s about an erroneous wire transfer.”

  The woman on the line said, “Oh dear. Okay, hold on, sir.”

  Widow waited and heard a whir and a click and then some quick elevator music that sounded older than elevators.

  Finally, a voice spoke. It was a man’s. He sounded young. He asked, “This is Peters. How can I help you today?”

  Widow explained the situation and waited for a response.

  Peters said, “Yes. Mr. Widow. I have your case right here in front of me on the computer. I was just looking through it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It appears that you called us and asked to make a wire transfer. The day before yesterday.”

  “I didn’t call at all.”

  “Well sir, we took the proper legal precautions to make sure it was you.”

  Widow tried to remain calm. Which was hard. Understandably, he felt.

  He asked, “What precautions?”

  “We asked the caller your security questions and information. He had all the right answers.”

  “What caller?”

  “I told you. The caller claimed to be you. Is that incorrect, sir?”

  “Of course it is incorrect!”

  Peters said, “Yes, sir. I see. I know this is difficult. But we can work together to figure this out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mr. Widow, just for the record. You are claiming that you didn’t make this call?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  Widow heard Peters keying in something on a keyboard. Then Widow realized that the call was also being recorded. Which wasn’t a big deal.

  Peters said, “The caller also faxed our wires department an official request to transfer your money to another account at another bank.”

  Widow said, “Is it that easy?”

  “Like I said, sir. He gave all the right security answers. Also…” Peters paused a beat.

  “What?”

  “Also his signature on the document.”

  “What about it?”

  “It matches yours. I’m not an expert, but it looks the same to me.”

  Widow paused. He certainly didn’t sign any document transferring all his money out of his account.

  Peters said, “Sir?”

  “Where did it go?”

  “To another account, sir. Another bank.”

  “No I mean what’s the name on the account?”

  “Not sure if I should reveal that information. Our policy is to hand this off to the police now.”

  Widow thought for a moment. Then he asked, “Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you, a small-town bank. Trying to compete with the big guys out there, give away a former military officer’s money to a criminal?”

  Not a sound from Peters.

  Widow asked, “What would people think?”

  Peters remained silent.

  “But if you told me the name, then maybe I’ll recognize it. Maybe I’ll remember sending it myself.”

  “It says here. Well, that’s a strange name. It must be a company.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “It’s Anymouse.”

&
nbsp; “Any Mouse?”

  “It’s one word.”

  “Anymouse?”

  “That’s it.”

  Widow shook his head in disbelief.

  Peters asked, “Sir, do you recognize the name?”

  “Cancel the inquiry. I know the name.”

  “Are you certain, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  Widow said goodbye and thanked him and hung up the phone. He looked around in case Miranda had come back into the kitchen. No one was there.

  CHAPTER 38

  ANYMOUSE IS SAILOR JARGON. Widow had heard it before. Every sailor had. The Navy is full of jargon and shorthand and slang terms.

  Anymouse was the name of a suggestion box onboard a battle carrier. It was always locked and always anonymous. It was old. It had been there long before his time. The best Widow could figure is it meant any person. The sailors were just mice.

  The purpose of it in this case must’ve been code for “anonymous.”

  Which made Widow narrow the list down of who it was to only one unit. And the ability to forge his signature close enough to the real deal meant that it was one person who had a staff that could do something like that.

  He picked up the phone and called his old unit.

  The phone rang. He waited.

  It was answered quickly by an automated voice, which asked him for an identification code. Widow gave it and waited.

  A male voice answered, and Widow said, “Rachel Cameron, please.”

  The male voice asked, “What is this about?”

  “Tell her that Jack Widow is standing exactly where she wanted him to be and I need to speak to her.”

  The male voice clicked off, putting Widow on hold.

  He waited around five minutes, which was long for Cameron to respond. But finally, her long-missed voice came on the line. She said, “Widow, what brings us this pleasure?”

  “Cameron. I’m here.”

  “Where’s that exactly?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I know about the wire transfer.”

  “Wire transfer?”

  “Yeah. You took all of my money out of my bank account two days ago.”

  Cameron asked, “I did?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know.”