“How long you been here?” Nina grimaced.
“We been here all afternoon. Since you and Ace rolled back in.”
“We?”
Janey yanked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “This way, darling. We is now a combined task force. Ad hoc, mind you.”
“Ad hoc, huh?” Nina glowered, then said, “Sounds like…”
Broker was standing deeper in the brush, spraying mosquito repellent on his arms and face. He handed the cannister to a husky man with short-cropped brown hair. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt. The shirt did not quite hide the dull twinkle of a pistol holstered on his belt. Broker’s truck was parked in the tall clump of Russian thistle.
As she approached, Broker softly clapped his hands in a lewd take-it-off rhythm. Jane left them and scrambled up a makeshift ladder made of several old air conditioners stacked together. She leaned over the top of the building next to the boxy capola of an exhaust fan and trained her glasses on the Missile Park.
Down on the ground, the guy standing next to Broker extended his hand. “Deputy Jim Yeager, Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department. It’s a real pleasure to see special ops in action.”
Nina dropped her bag and shook his hand. Broker took a step closer and said, “We concluded the man is very fast, considering the brief amount of time elapsed from when you first showed some skin to when he booted you out the door,” Broker said with a straight face.
“Fast on his feet, as it were,” Yeager said.
“Right, strictly a vertical encounter. No reclining going on that we could see,” Broker added.
Nina’s glare was wasted in the shadows. Broker and Yeager, however, were like two Cheshire cats, gleaming teeth floating in the gloom.
Broker handed Nina her go-bag, which Nina snatched from his hands. “Assholes. How about you turn around.”
“You’ll need this.” Broker handed her the can of OFF!. To their credit, Broker and Yeager let the ribbing die and turned around. Nina quickly sprayed a chemical bath, slipped out of the dress, and flung it at Broker’s back. It draped over his head. He raised the material in one hand and sniffed it, but said nothing.
Nina opened her bag, pulled on a pair of loose jeans, a sports bra, a baggy gray T-shirt, and a pair of black cross trainers. As she strapped on her pistol belt, she took a deep breath and let it out. Beneath the raunchy banter and her gruff reaction she felt a palpable aura of relief. She was in and out unscathed, and something was up.
And she and her husband were finally doing something together. She smiled as she checked her.45 auto in the hideout holster, made sure that it was on safe. Not exactly dinner for two and theater tickets, but what the hell…
She swatted at the bugs. “Damn critters are out in force.”
“All the rain,” Yeager said. “If you got a long-sleeve shirt in that bag, I suggest you put it on.”
Nina, stooped to her bag and pulled out a slipover and put it on. The mosquitoes hovered in close, probing, like little pin pricks of anxiety.
“So,” she said, “does your boss know what you’re doing, Yeager?”
“Let’s say I’m staying flexible,” Yeager said.
“He’s flying by the seat of his pants, like you,” Broker said.
“Anybody ever check out that Indian guy?” Nina asked.
“I called the BIA police at Turtle Mountain,” Yeager said. “They got a Joe Reed on the tribal roll. But nobody’s been in contact with him for two years, since he went up to work the oil fields in Alberta. Story is he got burned in an oil-rig fire.”
Nina shook her head. “Those scars on him are a lot more than two years old.”
“You got a point,” Yeager said.
“So now what?” she said.
Broker toed the ground. “We wait.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Dale ran the tape over and over until the light in the small basement windows went from gray to black and then he watched it one more time in the dark.
Then he went upstairs and microwaved one of Mom’s frozen suppers. Lasagna. A favorite. After his meal, he stacked his dirty plate in the sink, went into the garage, and took his bike off the hooks on the wall.
It had been a while since he’d been on a bike, but his plan for tonight made it necessary. He rode a little shakily through town and took a side street that paralleled the highway, following a round-about route to the Missile Park. Just as he was approaching the intersection with State 5, he saw Ace’s Tahoe going east, toward town. He strained his eyes to see if she was in there with him, but the light was already too faint and he couldn’t tell.
He continued on around back of the bar and saw Gordy’s Ford F-150, then Gordy, girded in his back brace, standing in a cone of light and swarming bugs under the utility bulb over the loading dock door. Gordy spotted him, eased off trundling the four cases of whiskey on his dolly, and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Dale said.
“You on a bike.” Gordy squinted. “Where’s your car?”
Dale shrugged as he got off the bike, dropped the kickstand, and parked it next to the truck. “Little exercise can’t hurt.”
“You shoulda thought of that starting about ten years ago,” Gordy said.
Dale gave him the finger, looked around. “So where’d Ace go just now?”
Gordy grinned. “Working, for a change.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“Gone. He kicked her out.”
Dale shook his head. Uh-uh. That can’t be. He fidgeted from foot to foot. Not part of his plan. She was supposed to still be here. “Maybe he took her along,” he said hopefully as he trudged up the steps to the dock. The woman had to be there at the end of the night; without her, it was gonna be a long couple days of terrible work. No play. Damn.
“Don’t think so.” Gordy paused, yanked a red bandana from his hip pocket, and mopped sweat from his forehead. “We had this bet. I got a hundred says she’s a cop. At first Ace wasn’t sure. But don’tcha know it, I was right.”
Dale shook his head, struggling to disguise his disappointment. “How did you find out?”
“It’s not like she told me, man. All I know is she’s gone.”
She’d be back, Dale was sure. He changed the subject. “So what are you sending to Canada tonight?”
“The last forty cases in the basement, most of it Jack Daniels. I appreciate the help, but I figured you got more than being a helping hand on your mind.”
Dale took the dolly from Gordy, went into the storeroom, worked the dolly under a stack of cases, tipped the cases back, and wheeled them outside. “Well,” he said, “I did talk to Ace, and he ain’t real pleased about the meth traffic. Especially if there’s cops snooping around. Maybe you could hold off till we’re outta here.”
“For sure. The guys up north say there’s some kind of squeeze going on. And Ace says I got to be extra careful tonight. Play some hide-and-seek, keep the lights out,” Gordy said.
Dale forced a grin. “Like in high school, drinking beer. Dodging the sheriff.” He wheeled the load into the truck and eased it off the dolly.
They worked in silence as they finished up the load. Gordy pulled a tarp and a cargo net over the cases, fastened it down, and then they sat on the loading dock and waited as the real dark inked over the fields. Dale watched the lights come on brighter in town, peered at every car that went by.
“So, they could be watching us?” he said.
“Yeah, and they could be anybody-deputies, state guys, who knows? But we’ll lose them in the dark.” He cuffed Dale on the shoulder. “Be fun, huh?”
“Yeah,” Dale said, trying to cover how bummed he was inside. What if she was really gone? He had trouble seeing his way through what lay ahead without taking her along.