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Angie Wilson put her phone away. She stood by the bar watching her friends dance while she thought about the call, Mac’s instructions, and why it bothered her.
She liked the Bohemian. It was Mac’s bar, which was pretty funny, because he didn’t drink. They kept Mountain Dew in the back refrigerator for him. She grinned. Mac and his Mountain Dew. It was primarily a dance club — but more like the offspring of a dance club and a neighborhood bar on Queen Anne. She felt comfortable here, even if she was alone. And you couldn’t say that about a lot of bars. Not if you were a single woman.
So the call. She resolutely examined what bothered her. Of course, the first thing was Mac and his cop sources were in danger. But also? Mac’s first instinct was to get her and his aunt to safety away from the action. While she was touched by his protective side, it was wrong. She was a news photographer, not a civilian bystander. And that was the problem, she decided. Mac had three categories of people: his crew, the enemy, and civilian bystanders. The crew was small. The enemy was vast — Mac was a suspicious, paranoid man — and civilians? Women and children, mostly, and they needed to be protected.
She didn’t want to be in that last category. If they were to make this relationship work, she had to be crew in his mind — the people he trusted to have his back, the ones he could count on.
She’d seen this when they were in the mountains in May. His first inclination was to stash her somewhere safe. When challenged, however, he accepted her as an equal partner, and she’d found that amazing and attractive. Amazingly attractive.
She nodded decisively. She needed to act like crew and challenge him. She called Janet Andrews, news editor for the Seattle Examiner, and told her what Mac had said.
“I’ll pick you up outside the bar in 15 minutes,” Janet said crisply. “I’m driving a Toyota RAV4, that color they call champagne. Do you have your camera equipment?”
“No, it’s in Mac’s car,” she said. She felt naked without it but bringing $5,000 worth of camera equipment into a bar was asking for trouble — even with Mac Davis as your personal bodyguard.
“I’ll bring mine. Not as good as yours, but it will do you,” she said. “We’ll swing by the Rodriguez place for photos, and then go to the hospital.”
“Thanks,” Angie said with gratitude. It sounded like Janet thought she was making the right decision here.
“I’ll send an email to your boss, as well,” Janet said. Angie could hear the amusement in her voice. “Prepare for more protective testosterone incoming.”
Angie laughed. Truth there. Her boss, the photo editor, sometimes sounded like a dad vetting his daughter’s dates rather than a hard-nosed photojournalist handing out assignments.
She waited inside the bar, mindful of Mac’s concerns. He was right, she realized. She was most vulnerable between door and car. And he had assessed that almost instinctively.
Truly, Mac was a scary dude. She respected him, liked him, thought she might even be falling in love with him. But, there was no debate: he was scary.
She used the time to call Lindy, Mac’s aunt. She told her what was going on and that Mac thought she might be safer at Anna Marie’s place. Lindy sighed. “That man,” she said. “I don’t know which I find more exasperating: him continually heading into danger that might splash over to those around him, or his protective nature that is constantly worrying about me and others who might be targets because of him. And I can’t tell you that it’s just him being paranoid — once they did come for me to get to him.”
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you,” Angie murmured.
“Exactly,” Lindy said. “Mac’s mantra. And damn it, I just got home and into comfortable clothes.” She sighed. “Well, no help for it. I’m headed to Anna Marie’s. Tell him when you see him. I’m surprised he didn’t try to send you along.”
Angie laughed. “He did,” she admitted cheerfully. “But I’m headed out with Janet to shoot photos at the crime scene. Have to train Mac to see me as part of the team, not someone to protect.”
“Good luck with that,” Lindy said. “Seriously. I think you’re exactly right. But, well... good luck!”
Angie laughed. She liked Lindy and her insane group of friends, much to Mac’s relief. His previous girlfriend hadn’t; Mac finally realized it wasn’t going to work if Kate couldn’t. No, Mac wasn’t going to marry a woman who thought his aunt was going to hell for being a lesbian.
“Take care,” Angie said. “Especially leaving the house to the car. Mac was very specific about how to do that.”
“Car’s in the garage, so I’m not exposed,” Lindy said. Obviously, she’d been the recipient of Mac’s instructions before.
Angie dropped the call, peered out the front door, and saw Janet’s car double-parked on the street waiting for her. She surveyed the street. It looked normal enough. No big black pickup waiting to mow her down. She nodded to the bouncer, and walked briskly to the SUV and got in the passenger seat.
Janet handed her a camera, and headed toward I-5.
“Nice,” Angie said, pleased with the camera. Not as good as hers, but it wasn’t an amateur’s camera either. She looked at the newly promoted news editor. It had been quite an in-house battle, behind the scenes, but the Seattle Examiner was safely in the hands of Janet Andrews, a 39-year-old woman with extensive journalism experience — including a stint in D.C.
Angie knew that only because the story in the Examiner had said so. Janet didn’t talk much about herself. She was a tall, fit woman, with a formidable sense of justice and honor, and a backbone of steel. She was also kind, funny, and had a dog name Pulitzer — because he never came when you called him. It always made her laugh.
Steven Whitman, the head of special projects, had been fighting dirty to get the news editor position himself. He was gone. His team was merged into the newsroom. Some of them left too, but a guy named Mike Brewster was making it work, in no small part because Mac liked him.
Mac had been instrumental in Janet getting the job, but he refused to talk about it. Of course. Janet hadn’t said anything either. Angie and Mike had speculated a bit at happy hour one night when Mac wasn’t around to silence them with ‘the look.’ Mike knew a bit more because, unlike Janet, Steve came back from a meeting with the publisher and fumed to his team.
Mac had accused Whitman of letting his personal religious beliefs interfere with his news judgment, Mike said. Whitman had been furious. The team had listened, and then ducked out for a happy hour at their usual hangout — one no one went to anymore. The boys club at the men’s club had been disbanded. She had coined the phrase, and it had struck the two of them as pretty funny when they’d both been blitzed. She still thought it was pretty clever. But she didn’t know more than that.
She knew the executive editor had retired and hadn’t been replaced. The D.C. bureau was now two people working from their homes. The bureau itself was closed. The end of an era. She thought it had hit Janet pretty hard, but she hadn’t said anything. She was currently hiring two assistant editors.
All Angie knew was that she wanted to be like this woman when she grew up. Well, she wasn’t going to look like her — she was short about six inches in height. But she hoped she’d be as firm in her convictions. Janet backed her people.
Mac admired her. And Angie was pretty sure that made Janet Andrews part of a very small group of people.
“You know where Rodriguez lives?” she asked her now.
Janet nodded. “Called Joe Conte; he’s making some calls,” she said referring to the Examiner’s other cop reporter. “He knew — he’s north of the U district. Probably saved Rodriguez’s life, being that close to the medical center. Have you heard anything more from Mac?”
Angie shook her head. “He expected me to obey and turned his mind to other things,” she said ruefully.
Janet smiled at her. “Don’t let him get away with that,” she advised.
“Figured that out already.” Angie laughed. “So, did Stan call you?” She knew Janet and Stan Warren, an FBI agent, were dating.
“Of course not,” she said with mock horror. “First, he has the same protective instincts that Mac has. And second? I’m a newspaper editor! An FBI agent does not call the newspaper to alert them of anything. The first time we met, he threw a fit because Rodriguez told me he’d have the public information officer call me.”
Angie laughed. “But you figure he knows?”
Janet nodded. “I’m sure he was the first person Mac called for backup. Flip a coin. Will it be Stan at the Rodriguez house? Or Rand?”
“The other one will be outside Rodriguez’s hospital room,” Angie said. She liked Rand. They’d survived the May militia story together, when he’d been an undercover FBI agent, and she had been accompanying Mac as a news photographer. Since then, she’d worked for Wilderness Adventures as a guide a couple of times with him. Both of them found it therapeutic to get out into the mountains. Mac? He got the same look of horror as a cat caught in the rain. She grinned at the thought.
She’d only met Stan Warren a couple of times, but she liked him. A Black man — a very good-looking man in Angie’s opinion — in his mid-40s, he’d been high up in the ranks in D.C. before he requested a transfer to Seattle. She thought Seattle was considered a demotion, and while she knew Janet had figured into his decision, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the only reason. But he wasn’t talking about it. At least not with her.
Dating Mac was an eye-opening experience. He might grumble that he didn’t like cops, but he was hanging out with them more and more. Which meant she did too. A very different crowd to go drinking with, no lie, than her mix of friends and colleagues from the newspaper. Her friends laughed, drank frou-frou drinks, ate food, gossiped, and if late enough, danced.
Mac and the cops found a table, and they drank. They talked shop, traded insults, and they drank even more. The four men, and now Janet and herself. Rodriguez never brought his wife. She didn’t even know if Rand had a partner. Same with Joe. She was fascinated by the different culture. Cop culture. Yet Mac fit in, in spite of his protests about cops, and the fact that he didn’t actually drink alcohol. His military background, she supposed. She’d seen in it the mountains too. Mac was a man other men looked to for leadership. And he was used to it. He expected he would have to lead and take responsibility for all of those in his care.
Last time they were out as a group, she’d gone to the bathroom. When she came out, she’d leaned next to the bar, and used her phone to take photos. She would have liked to use a real camera, but she suspected if she brought it out, she’d be banned from their happy hour for life. Still the phone photos were pretty good. She’d like to print them in black and white. When she had time. She grimaced. The photo department was short-handed like the rest of the newsroom.
Janet drove north on Aurora, and then turned east on 65th Street. “Watch for 45th Avenue,” she said, as they crossed I-5 into the Ravenna neighborhood. Must be out by Sand Point, Angie thought. She’d liked exploring the neighborhoods of Seattle, camera in hand, when she’d arrived here two years ago. She must have thousands of images by now.
Two years. She was in a much better place than she had been when she first came here. Coming out of an abusive relationship, her confidence had been shaken — in herself, in her abilities as a photographer, in her judgment of other people. But she’d explored, and she’d freelanced a lot of them to the Examiner. When a position opened up six months later, she’d applied and got on as a staff photographer.
She loved it. They were understaffed and overworked. Her schedule was erratic, and she was on-call 24/7, especially now that she and Mac were a thing, because if Mac got a call out, Mac called her to go with him.
She was the only woman on the photo staff, something that had surprised her when she started working in the photo department. She suspected it might have been one of the reasons she was hired. “Did you have a say in me getting hired?” she asked Janet, still looking out her window at the street signs.
“Not you specifically,” Janet replied. She didn’t seem surprised by the question, but then Angie had found very little surprised the woman who ran the entire news operation of the newspaper. “But I did suggest very strongly that they needed to hire a woman.” Janet glanced at her. “Everyone is very happy with you and your work. And they hold you in high regard because you’re not afraid of Mac Davis, and you’re willing to work with him.”
Angie laughed. “He’s got a rep,” she agreed.
“And earned every bit of it.”
“There,” Angie said, and pointed. Janet slowed down and made a left-hand turn.
Spotting the house wasn’t hard. Someone had really shot the SUV up, and they hadn’t been all that careful with their aim — the front of the ranch-style house as well as the two-car garage had taken a beating as well.
“Holy shit,” Angie said. “And he’s alive?”
Janet pulled along the curb and parked. Angie looked around. The street was silent. No cops. No yellow do-not-cross tape. Nothing. “This isn’t normal,” Angie said at last.
Janet shook her head. “No.”
A Black man detached himself from the garage where he’d been standing, watching. Angie hadn’t seen him until he moved — a Black man wearing black clothes leaning against a dark building. He had on a windbreaker that she suspected said FBI on the back, and he was carrying a pistol hanging down by his leg. At least she hoped that was Stan Warren walking toward them carrying a gun. She wondered if Janet had known he was there?
Janet didn’t get out of the car, so neither did she. She just stared at the bullet-riddled SUV. They had intended Nick Rodriguez wasn’t going to walk away from that, she thought troubled. She wanted to get out and shoot some photos, but she waited. Waited until Janet gave her the OK.
Stan Warren rapped on the window to the seat behind her, and Janet popped the door locks. He slid inside. “What the hell are you two doing here?” he demanded.
“Heard there was a news story going on,” Janet said. “And since my cop reporter is playing backup to a couple of cops, I figured I’d come take a look at the crime scene myself. Brought my photog along. Holy Mother of God, Stan, what the hell happened here?”
“On the record?”
She snorted. “Sure,” she said dryly. “On the record.”
“No comment.”
“And off the record?”
Stan sighed. Angie looked back at him; he looked a decade older, and tired. “I’m not completely sure,” he said. “But apparently a black pickup came down the street as Nick was going to the store. Shot him up. But that’s not a Ford Explorer. It’s Ford’s souped-up Interceptor model. Not sure why Nick bought that last year when they replaced their SUV. But it’s a good thing he did — it’s the only thing that’s giving him a chance of pulling through. That and the fact his wife works at the ballistics lab, his neighbor is a nurse, and they live 15 minutes from UW Medical Center.”
“Safe for me to take some photos?” Angie asked.
Stan hesitated, and didn’t that say a lot? “I think so,” he says. “I’ve been here 40 minutes and haven’t seen anything suspicious. But this was a well-orchestrated hit. An elaborate one. Took out his most likely backup, knew he was leaving the house. So, this wasn’t just a lone man. Someone was watching. I haven’t seen anyone. But be careful.”
Angie nodded. She pulled her camera out of the camera bag and found a cap she pulled down over her head to cover the teal streak in her hair. She slid out of the car. She processed information visually. More than that, she processed specifically through the camera lens. It forced her to really see, to focus, frame, and shoot what was there. Not what she thought she saw. Not what she wanted to see.
What was there.
Her movement triggered the lights above the garage. Interesting that Stan hadn’t done that when he’d come out to Janet’s car. She thought about where he’d walked — outside the light’s range. The light would have acted like a spotlight, lighting him up to whoever had just pulled up — to whoever might be out there still, watching. Even though he must have recognized Janet’s car, he’d stayed in the shadows, just in case it wasn’t. She filed that away. Stan Warren was a careful man.
Angie shot the scene from several different vantages. Close, medium, scene-setting. Vertical, horizontal, square. Left-facing, right-facing. The garage, the house, the car. She moved to the vehicle and peered into its interior. There was blood. Glass had shattered under the onslaught. As her eyes adjusted, she began to distinguish between the dark brown-red of the blood, and the black of the interior, and she swallowed. There had been a lot of blood.
She looked down at the pavement. There was blood there too, she realized, and she was standing in some of it. She moved; her feet weren’t tacky, so not wet, not enough to pool. She visualized what must have happened, and pulled back, and took a shot with the open door, and the smear of blood on the pavement. It had been left when Nick’s wife and their neighbor had pulled him out of there, she realized.
She also realized that Stan didn’t seem concerned about her contaminating the crime scene. She frowned as she returned to the car. Questions, she thought. I have questions.
Janet watched her young photographer at work for a moment. “You’re letting her take pictures? Even contaminating the scene,” she observed. “What’s going on?”
Stan was silent, and Janet didn’t look at him. Some men found it easier to talk when you weren’t eye-to-eye with them. They found it confrontational, and it triggered their fight mode, she’d discovered. Especially men who were used to doing battle. She always positioned Mac kitty-corner from her when they went for coffee, for instance. Side by side worked — like men at a football game. Or maybe like this, where he didn’t have to school his emotions. So, she let him take his time; it wasn’t easy for an agent to talk to a reporter under any circumstances.
She heard him sigh. “I called for backup when I got here,” he said heavily. “And then I called for a crime scene team. That was 30 minutes ago.”
Janet frowned. “Did you call your office?” she asked, perplexed.
“Ten minutes ago,” he said.
“What the hell?” she murmured, not expecting an answer. “That’s pretty extensive.”
“Janet, I don’t know what to think,” he blurted out. “So, there’s always been rumors of cops being left hanging, right? They make movies about it. It’s rare. And it’s usually, one partner not responding to another, or maybe within a unit. But this? This involves more than that. Both the SPD and the FBI.”
“Did anyone call for an ambulance? That’s fire department, isn’t it?”
“I think Joe Dunbar did, and nothing showed up,” Stan said. “Mac suggested certain numbers were blocked, so that calls from Dunbar, Rodriguez weren’t recognized. I don’t know if that’s technologically possible. But what about mine?”
Janet tried to visualize it against what she knew of procedures. It had been a long time since she covered a cop beat. “Dispatch?” she asked. “Could it be done at dispatch?”
He considered that. “Possibly,” he said slowly. “But that doesn’t explain my call to my own SAC. It went to voicemail, but then he gets pinged and calls back. No call back.”
“Have you heard from Rand?” she said, changing the subject. “How are Joe and Nick?”
“Nick is still in surgery. Joe’s bandaged and sitting next to Rand. Mac is pacing,” Stan said, a bit of humor at the last.
“So you decided to use my photographer as your crime scene photog?” she asked returning to the previous subject.
“More or less,” he admitted. “I picked up some bits and pieces, and bagged them. Not what a crime scene team could do, but better than nothing.”
Angie walked back to the car and got inside. “I’m surprised you let me do that,” she said. “No crime scene team?”
“Not yet,” he said. “May need your shoe if they ever show up.”
Janet grinned. So he had noticed Angie’s little dance when she realized what she’d stepped in.
“What do you think?” Stan asked. “Rand has great respect for your powers of observation through that camera of yours.”
Angie considered the question for a moment in silence.
“They wanted him to die,” she said. “But it’s more than that. They wanted people to know how he died — all those sprayed shots to the garage and house — and for his family to remember it. And they wanted to send a message — I’m not sure to who — that they should be afraid, not just for themselves but for their families, their homes.”
There was silence in the car.
“What was Nick involved in, Stan?” Janet asked. “Do you know?”
“No,” he said. “He hasn’t mentioned any cases of note. Are you headed to the hospital next?”
“After a swing past the other scene,” she said. “You want to come along?”
“I would if I could get someone else out here,” he said sourly. “But right now? There are seven kids under 14 in that house next door with one terrified mother to guard them. And me. I’m not going anywhere. The Rodriguez kids are scared about their dad. The neighbor kids are scared because there was all that shooting. The mother is terrified because she was born in El Salvador, and her husband just left to help Anna Rodriguez get Nick to the hospital.”
Janet glanced at him then. He looked grim. “Can I help?” she asked him.
“Have you called the office?” Angie asked suddenly.
Janet frowned, and pulled out her phone, and called the night cop reporter — the only person they had working nights now. It made her sad as a reminder of how diminished they were as a staff.
Joe Conte was the night cop reporter. He was an easy-going guy, thankfully, because anyone else who had to share a desk with Mac would have killed him — or tried — by now. Instead they’d managed to work it out, and there seemed to be mutual respect. He’d been instructed to start making the calls.
“What have you got?” Janet asked now.
“The PD dispatch insists it’s been quiet,” he said. “I asked specifically about those two neighborhoods. They said there was nothing. So I wandered over to SPD and looked at the printouts. There’s a weird blip in the time stamp, Janet. As if there had been a power outage. I asked about it, but the dispatcher on duty said he didn’t have any clue what that was about.”
“Did they get calls from anywhere during that blip?” Janet asked, her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure that out.
“Yes,” he answered. “I had them make copies of the pages for me. I’m mapping now. My best guess is that there was the equivalent of a power outage to dispatch on the router from two areas — and yes they match the blocks of the addresses you gave me. It blipped back on — my non-technical term — for the Queen Anne area, but it hasn’t for the Sand Point one. I’m guessing it’s the equivalent of a communication blackout. A cell tower down, kind of thing.”
Janet thanked him and hung up, repeating what he’d said to Stan.
Stan Warren looked at her blankly. “Is that even possible?” he asked.
“You’re the FBI,” she said. “That’s more your bailiwick than mine.”
“More CIA spook stuff, if you ask me,” he muttered. “Who understands technological shit like this?”
Angie and Janet looked at each other. Angie sighed and nodded.
“I’ll call him,” Angie said.