The pale yellow stucco house was listed as belonging to Andrew Taylor, but Daniel didn’t doubt the dusty jeep in the driveway was registered to Tyler McCall.
“That’s Dad’s jeep,” Josie confirmed as Daniel parked their rental car behind it and cut off the engine.
The Oregon license plate had been carefully smudged with dirt so as to be unreadable, but this close the distinctive image of Mt. Hood between the letters could be made out.
Hot, still air hit him, the minute Daniel opened his car door, compromising the air-conditioned interior. Nevada was no hotter than a lot of places he’d been, but its desert sun was strong and bright, shimmering on the sand like liquid air.
Josie came around the car, and they went together to the front door. There was no answer to their first knock, or their second.
She pushed the doorbell, and a muted chime sounded through the thick wooden door.
“Dad, it’s me! Open up.” At the continued lack of response, her brows knit in a frown. “Either he’s not here, or he’s pretending not to be.”
With Tyler, either was possible. “Let’s take a look around back.”
“Watch for electronic eyes. Dad isn’t going to have a safe house without some heavy-duty security features, and I don’t want to deal with triggering one of his traps.”
Daniel agreed and tread carefully as they made their way around to the back of the house. He almost missed the first eye hidden behind a scrub bush against one wall, but spotted the second soon after. He avoided them both. The back patio’s weathered brick was devoid of outdoor furniture or any sign of life.
Josie made a sound of disgust as she looked around. “Well, that netted us nothing.”
The sliding glass door to the interior was covered with a privacy curtain so they couldn’t see into the house, and all the back windows had interior shutters, which were closed.
“We’ll have to go inside,” Daniel said, eyeing the subtle signs of Tyler’s security system.
It took almost thirty minutes to disable it and break into the house. When they did, the sparsely furnished southwestern-style home was empty.
“Where could he have gone without the jeep? This house isn’t exactly on a bus line.”
“Maybe we should be asking who he went with.”
Josie’s features tightened. “Or more importantly, did he go of his own accord?”
“There’s no reason to believe he didn’t. There are no signs of a struggle, and we only discovered this place because you’d read the journals. What are the chances his enemies know about it, too?”
She smiled briefly. “Knowing my dad’s penchant for privacy, very small, but where the heck is he?”
Daniel didn’t bother answering the rhetorical question, but started searching through drawers in the kitchen. Josie joined him and when their search revealed nothing useful, they moved to the other rooms, looking in every conceivable place for an indication Tyler had even been there.
There was nothing. He’d made a clean sweep of the place before leaving.
Josie picked up the phone. “I’m going to try redial. It’s the last thing I can think of.”
“Good idea.”
She pressed the button and listened. Her soft green eyes lit with satisfaction as the phone was picked up at the other end.
Then she said, “This is Andrew Taylor’s secretary. I’m calling to confirm his return ticket to Reno.” She waited, listening to the other person speaking. “No return ticket? But I’m supposed to pick him up at the airport. Perhaps you can find his ticket under his card number.” She read off a credit card number Hotwire had identified as belonging to Andrew Taylor of Nevada. “Hmm…What flights are available for return tomorrow?…Yes, I see. Let me call him on his cell and ask which one he’d prefer. Thanks. Oh, is there any way we can link this ticket to his outbound, or are we going to have to pay one-way fares?…Thanks, that would be great.”
She hung up the phone. “He flew to Missoula International Airport on an early morning flight, but he didn’t book a return flight.”
The location was too much of a coincidence, being the closest airport to the GPS location for her laptop. “He knows the group that blew up his school and tried to kill him.”
“And where their headquarters are evidently. He’s gone to face them alone. Why didn’t he call us?”
He liked the way she subconsciously linked them together as a unit, but he didn’t agree her dad had gone off on a Lone Ranger mission. “More likely he’s doing a recon.”
“Alone,” she said disgustedly. “What happens if he’s caught gathering information?”
Daniel couldn’t believe she’d asked that. “Josie, this is your dad we’re talking about. He was LLRP in Nam and has been training other mercs ever since. He may be past his prime in age, but no one is going to see him unless he wants them to.”
“So, do we follow him to Montana?”
“We’d be better off waiting for him to come back here.”
“He didn’t book a return flight.”
“Not as Andrew Taylor, but it’s possible he booked one under another alias as an extra level of security. It’s the kind of thing your dad would do.”
“Right. Let’s call Hotwire and see if he can find out.”
“Can’t you look? You brought your new laptop with you.” He wasn’t as jealous of Hotwire since Josie had said she didn’t want him and shown Daniel how much she did want him, even after he said tactless and sometimes stupid things.
However, it still bothered him that his friend’s computer savvy gave him a role in Josie’s life that excluded Daniel.
“Hotwire is a lot faster at this stuff than I am.”
“Does he have the list of names you compiled from the journals?”
“Yes, and he’s continuing to search on those names as well as Andrew Taylor. I hope he has better luck turning something up on the others than I did.”
Josie made the call, and an hour later, Daniel’s guess was proved right. A flight had been booked for the day after tomorrow from Missoula International to Reno under the name of Yancy Carpenter, another name off Josie’s list.
“So, we just wait for him here?” she asked after hanging up the phone, clearly not thrilled with the idea.
“It’s our best chance at crossing paths with him.”
“We could fly to Missoula.”
“And do what? We know the general area to look, but we have no way of knowing which direction your dad chose for his reconnaissance.”
“So, we wait.”
Daniel shrugged.
“What if he decides to fly back to Oregon instead?”
“Hotwire’s at your house in case he goes there, and Tyler has my cell phone number memorized.”
“If he remembers it.”
“He remembered this place and enough to figure out who is trying to kill him. I doubt his memory is as impaired as you and the doctor thought.”
Josie went to the sink and poured herself a glass of water from the tap filter. “You think he was faking me out?”
“Yes. Probably for your own protection.”
She took a long drink and then licked her lips in a move guaranteed to spark libidinous thoughts. “Why? I could have helped him.”
Daniel decided he could use his own glass of cooling water. “He may have raised you to be a soldier, but that doesn’t mean he wants you risking your life for him.”
“I’ve risked my life plenty of times.”
That wasn’t something Daniel needed to think about. “From what Tyler told me, he didn’t like you going into the mercenary business. He wanted you to teach other soldiers how to fight.”
She leaned back against the counter, her clingy pink tank top an invitation to sin. “He liked my move into computers even less.”
Daniel did his best to drink his water and ignore the invitation. “He’s worried you won’t fit in, and he feels like it’s his fault.”