Barb’s audio editing went smoothly, and she lost herself in the task. She was ready to save the final result back to her phone when she glanced out the window and saw the new sheriff heading for the front door.
Damn.
She couldn’t take the chance of being caught. She minimized the browser and got to her feet. Forcing herself to move calmly, she crossed the room and headed down the hallway she found on the other side. It was dark with all the doors leading off of it closed. She chose one at random and pulled it open. Inside, she found a small room with a plastic chair and a cot. On the cot was a man in a sheriff’s uniform. Barb put her finger to her lips and began to pull the door shut. At the last second, she stopped herself.
Shit.
She’d almost locked herself in here with him. He quickly got to his feet.
“The new sheriff’s coming,” she said. “I need to hide.”
The old sheriff reached for the outside knob. It had a lever, which he quickly twisted before pulling the door gently closed.
“Let’s hope she doesn’t decide to check up on me,” he said under his breath.
They stood unmoving, listening for footsteps. As time passed and no one came to the door, they gradually relaxed. He studied her face as if trying to solve a puzzle. His eyes lit up with recognition.
“You’re the woman who bid against Jackery in the property auction,” he said.
She stuck out her hand. “Ellie,” she said.
“Ex-sheriff David Westford,” he said after a moment, taking her hand. “Now, what exactly are you doing here?”
“Fighting back against our mutual enemy.”
“That asshole Jackery.”
“That’s the one.”
“Are you suicidal or delusional?”
“Neither,” she said. “I have a plan.”
“A plan.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“How do I know you won’t run and tell Jackery to get back in his good graces?”
“That man is the devil. I’ve regretted every second of my life after I let him seduce me into helping him.”
Barb studied the man in front of her. Once again, she was at a crossroads, needing to decide whether to trust a potential ally. The former sheriff could potentially help carry out her plan, or he could blow her cover. The stakes could hardly have been higher. As she’d done countless times before, Barb decided to trust her gut.
She gave him the broad outlines of her plan while holding back anything he didn’t absolutely need to know. For example, she repeated the fiction of working for a powerful man.
“Barb,” he said.
“He prefers not to get involved personally, so he uses agents like me.”
“What’s his stake in all of this? Why does he care about our little county?”
“He doesn’t. He and Jackery are business rivals. They take every opportunity they can to screw with each other.”
“Fuck me,” he said. “Well, I suppose the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” she said. “But the fact my boss lacks the purest of motives doesn’t mean I do, too. In my short timehere,e I’ve come to care for the people I’ve met, and I’m personally motivated to fight the monster who’s targeted them. So, let’s be friends—with no ulterior motive other than to send Peter Jackery to hell. What do you say?”
She extended her hand. He looked at it for a long moment before extending his own to clasp hers.
“I still think you’re crazy,” he said. “But you’re all we’ve got.”
“Well, I’ve told you my plan, such as it is,” she said. “I only wish it had a better opening move.”
“I think I might be able to help with that.”
#
Barb and Westford waited by the door, listening to Susan’s progress through the station. She was with a couple of deputies, and, perhaps in an attempt to project authority, she spoke in a voice louder than necessary. That made it easy to follow her progress along the hallway, past the break room, and down to the end.
“She’s in my office,” whispered the ex-sheriff in disgust.
Powers didn’t stay there long, heading back up the hallway, still talking too loudly. When she came to the break room door, she stopped. Barb pressed herself against the wall to the side of the door as Westford slipped quietly to the cot.
“How are you doing in there, David?” came the sheriff’s voice through the door.
“Burn in hell, Susan,” said Westford.
“You have yourself a nice day now.” Powers and her posse continued up the hall and out.
Barb and Westford held themselves still, listening. After a long period of silence, he stood, and she went to the door, turning the knob. They slipped into the hallway together and down to the door at the end. Westford opened it, revealing a neat and modest office. The desk was metal, and there were a couple of metal and plastic chairs in front of it. The walls were hung with photos, many of them of Westford with a pretty woman and a couple of children between them. He saw Barb looking at them.
“We’re divorced,” he said. “Thank God she and the kids are nowhere near here.”
He went around to the front of the desk and leaned down to open the bottom drawer. He came out with a cell phone. He woke it up and entered the passcode. Holding it up where they could both hear it, he played an audio file.
“FBI,” said a woman’s voice. “How may I direct your call?”
#
Barb took Westford’s phone out to the desk in the bullpen while he went back to the break room. She sat in front of the computer, which now displayed an official-looking screensaver. When she jiggled the mouse, a box appeared demanding login credentials.
Fuck.
She looked around the desk for any password-containing sticky notes. No luck. She tried a few of the most common ones, such as Passw0rd or 12345678. Nothing worked. Feeling desperate, she stood and walked quickly across to the hall and then into the break room.
“Do you know Carol Jean’s password?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, shit.”
“But I do know the admin password.”
#
The admin password got her in. She uploaded the file from the ex-sheriff and played it all the way through. It was near perfect just as it was. All she did was adjust the levels and trim out a few parts. When she was finished, she downloaded the file to her phone. She closed the browser window and deleted the browsing history.
She cleaned up after herself and turned to the base station. She turned up the volume on the radio, placed her phone in front of the mic, clicked the talk button, and pressed play.
#
Danita’s anxiety grew with each minute sitting in the Park-N-Shop with her parents. Her mother wept silently as her father slowly lost the dazed expression on his face—one of anger beginning to take its place. Danita was afraid he was building up the courage to do something foolhardy. She put her hand on his arm, squeezing it to get his attention. He turned to her.
“Just hang on,” she said under her breath. “Ellie’s working on a plan.”
“It’s too late for that,” he said.
“Give it an hour. I promise you’ll see the plan in action.”
She could see the struggle on his face. He was a man slow to anger. Once aroused, however, that anger was a freight train running through him and equally hard to stop. She reached for his hand and got him to look her straight in the eye.
“Please, Dad,” she said.
“One hour,” he said at last.
That left Danita acutely aware of the passage of time. Five minutes became 10, and 15 became 20. The mood in the store subtly began to shift as the shock wore off. Even with the hottest heads locked in the back of the store, enough strong men remained to overwhelm the guards if they all moved in concert. The problem was that the guards were armed. Any uprising, even a successful one, would involve bloodshed. The men were undoubtedly aware of this, but they were farmers and ranchers, men accustomed to physical danger, men who handled beasts many times their own size. The only thing that truly terrified them was the feeling of helplessness.
Danita prayed Barb would make her move before needless violence broke out. She glanced around the store, her eyes landing on Toby. From the look on his face and the tension evident in his body, she could tell he was picking up on the same mood shift she was. For a moment, she felt for him. She knew he wouldn’t want to hurt any of his friends and neighbors, but he might face a situation in which it was inevitable—at least if he wanted to defend himself. Then she reminded herself he’d placed himself here by going along with the theft of the Sanchez farm. His willingness to help Barb went partway to redeeming him in her eyes, but she couldn’t forgive him for his embrace of evil.
As the minutes ticked by and the mood grew more and more tense, Danita felt herself fill with helpless dread. She began to regret her decision to ask her father for an hour of patience, a time period which had seemed like more than enough when she’d offered it but now seemed hopelessly short. Just as it felt like the bands of tension crisscrossing her body would crush her, a loud crackle sounded from multiple places in the store. Toby looked at the handheld radio on his belt. He pulled it out and held it up. The other guards held theirs up as well, producing a weird sort of surround sound of static.
The static disappeared, followed by the sound of a phone call beginning, followed by a click, followed by a woman’s voice.
“FBI. How may I direct your call?”
“Uh, sorry. Wrong number,” said a man’s voice.
A click ended the call.
“What do you think about that?” came the voice of the ex-sheriff.
“Could it be what it sounded like? A wrong number?” came Jackery’s voice.
“No one calls the FBI by mistake.”
“Then what do you make of it, David?”
“It’s obviously a coded message. From an undercover agent reporting in. It’s widely known these militia outfits are riddled with undercovers and informants.”
There was a stunned silence, then the whole place exploded.