Kenneth came out the front door of the office and stepped into a waiting car, from the looks of it, a rideshare. A few minutes later, the SUV pulled out from behind the headquarters, but Patrick was driving. He turned right onto Lake Mead Boulevard and, at the light, flipped a U-turn and drove right past the coffee shop.
Maria pulled out and followed him.
Patrick took the entrance onto 95 and headed north. He stayed on 95 until the turnoff for Mount Charleston. Maria had to let him get a way ahead because the road was one lane and her headlights were easy to spot. She wondered if he was leading her out here to a deserted area on purpose, but she doubted he’d have left Kenneth behind for something like that.
No, Patrick was coming out here to see someone, and the only person she knew attached to the campaign who lived out here was Nick.
Patrick ended up getting so far ahead of her that she lost him, but she looked up the property records on her cell phone and found Nick’s house. It was a cabin on the curve of Matterhorn Way.
Maria drove by and saw Patrick’s SUV parked in the driveway.
Patrick was sitting alone in the front seat, typing on his phone. If he wasn’t pulled in head first, he might have seen her as she passed. This location was going to be impossible for her to watch from her car. She pulled a little further down the road and found a house, completely dark with an empty driveway.
She parked and stepped out. Took a position at the corner of the garage. Through the trees, she could make out Nick’s house and Patrick’s car, but she couldn’t see anything clearly. The night air was cold, especially this high, and she’d wished she’d brought a jacket. Waiting in the car wasn’t an option, though. She couldn’t see anything from where it was parked.
She stood like that for an hour, shivering, until headlights approached Nick’s house.
A car door opened and closed. It looked like Nick, but from this distance, Maria couldn’t really be sure.
The two men went inside.
Maria left the garage and walked up the street. The moon looked so close, as if the trees were touching it. There were no houses between her and Nick’s. Just trees and mountain and night sky. She wondered what she hoped to achieve. Was she going to confront the two of them and demand answers?
Probably not. Two former special forces members. She doubted confronting them would go well, and out here, there weren’t any witnesses. If they were the ones responsible for everything, she’d disappear without a trace.
She stepped off of the road and behind a tree facing the front of the house. Nick and Patrick were in the living room. Patrick had his finger out and was pointing it in Nick’s chest. Nick had his hands in the air, palms up.
Maria couldn’t hear what Patrick was saying, but he was yelling. The sound carried, but the words were indistinguishable. She tried to see a way she could get closer without being seen, but it was too risky. Maybe she could get to the front porch without one of them seeing her. Maybe she could get under the living room window and hear something useful.
But if they came outside while she was there, she’d have nowhere to run to.
The two of them were really going at it now.
Nick was leaning into the finger poked into his chest.
The two of them screaming into each other’s faces.
For a moment, Maria wondered if they were going to start fighting, but then they stepped away from each other. Nick walked off. Patrick just stood there, shaking his head. When Nick came back into view, he had a bottle of liquor, from the shape, tequila. He motioned toward the table.
Patrick shook his head.
Nick poured a couple of shots and handed one to Patrick. He held off for a bit but ended up relenting. Drank his shot standing up.
Maria went around the side of the house, trying to find a place where she could approach without being seen. Against the far side was a rickety-looking one-car garage. She walked around it and found a door. Opened it and looked inside. The only car was a late model Oldsmobile. Super old. The bumper looked like it was being held on by wire and gum. Maria remembered talking to Les’s neighbor and how convinced the woman had been about an old Oldsmobile that was parked outside of Les’s house, and the license plate on the RV that actually belonged to a 1993 Oldsmobile. Les’s neighbor had said the car was a source of dark energy, or something like that. At the time, Maria had more or less written the car off, and she’d almost forgotten entirely about Les.
But here was a car matching the description.
Kind of unlikely this was just a coincidence.
Maria closed the door. Looked around the back of the cabin, but there was nowhere she could see to eavesdrop. Short of barging in, Maria wasn’t going to get her answers here, but she was pretty sure where she could find the answer she was looking for.