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Angie Wilson still thought she should have gone with Mac to Vallejo, but there was no use fuming over it. He’d slept for a few hours, then quietly got up to leave. Trying not to wake her, she thought, either out of courtesy or to avoid more discussion about whether she should go or not.
Actually, she could make an argument that he shouldn’t go either, but she wasn’t even going to try. Mac was intensely loyal to the people he considered his. And Toby was on that list — whether he deserved to be there or not.
But she wasn’t going to let him sneak off in the middle of the night without at least saying goodbye. So she got up and followed him downstairs into the kitchen. Wrapping her arms around him from behind, she pressed her cheek against his back. “You be careful, you hear?” she said.
He turned and pulled her into a hug and held her. “I will,” he said gravely, and it sounded almost like a promise. “No unnecessary risks. I’ve got reason to want to come home.”
She considered that. Had he never had that before? She thought about what she knew of his life and guessed maybe not. “You remember that,” she said, and she reached up and kissed him. “Remember you’re coming home to me.”
He nodded and pressed her head against his chest. He held her tightly. She thought he was more worried about the trip than he’d let on. She almost started to say something, but then she didn’t. He let go of her finally. “I’ll call,” he promised, then shouldered his duffel and walked out the back door.
She chuckled a bit at that. It sounded more like a man leaving after a date than a man setting out to rescue his drug lord cousin and his family from God only knew what. “I love you,” she whispered.
She saw him pause at the door, and then he went outside. “I love you, too,” he said quietly.
Angie closed her eyes. Bring him back safely, she told God, more of an order than a prayer. She wasn’t sure if she even believed there was a god. But in times like this it didn’t hurt. She tried to tell herself that Mac could take care of himself. And she knew he could. She told herself he’d been to war and come home, and that was also true. Something about all of this troubled her. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. She thought that might be how Mac was feeling too.
She glanced at the clock. She needed to get more sleep before going into work. She had the 7 a.m. shift today on the photo desk. Maybe she’d see if Janet was up for lunch or something.
She needed to run up to Craig’s apartment too. She could do that after work, she decided. Check it out. And then call her old roommates for a drink afterwards. She couldn’t mope around here. She’d go nuts.
Feeling better with a plan — such as it was — she went back upstairs and slept for a few hours. If she left at 6 a.m. she could beat the morning rush-hour traffic to get to the Examiner office down in Pioneer Square.
She was getting as bad as Mac, she thought with a snort. He always calculated everything around rush-hour traffic and commute times. She had never done that. Never planned ahead like that. But then Mac had no patience. Zero. If she got trapped in traffic, she turned on music and inched her way forward like everyone else.
She’d been in the car with Mac when they got backed up behind an accident. She had seriously considered getting out and walking — walking anywhere. He fumed. He cursed. He criticized the drivers who crashed, the first responders, and the driving habits of the others who were in this stop-and-go traffic with them. He tapped his fingers on the wheel. Bounced his knee and tapped his foot. Listen to music? Yeah, he found some rap, and that did nothing to calm him down.
After that, she was more than willing to check the traffic before they started out. She knew backup routes. She designated herself the navigator and took the role seriously. She never wanted to be trapped in a vehicle in stop-and-go traffic with Mackensie Davis again.
So after a few more hours of sleep, she went into the office. She had the desk today, and of course, someone had managed to take all horizontal photos for the story on page one, and Janet needed a vertical. Angie gave her one, with some manipulation and cropping. And she sent off a snippy note to the photog, copied to the photo editor, about getting the right mix: horizontal, vertical and square. Panoramic, closeups, mid-range. People looking to the left and the right.
The photog, a man about 10 years older than she was, snapped back that in his professional judgment, the photo called for a horizontal, and editorial ought to accept that.
I’ll tell Janet you said so, Angie emailed back. There was silence. No one wanted to cross Janet Andrews, even before her promotion. Angie didn’t know why. Janet never lost her temper. She could be quite scathing, Angie had been told. Angie shrugged. Janet had always been kind to her. In fact, Angie was pretty sure Janet’s insistence that it was time for a woman on the photo staff was why she even got the job.
She did some more computer work for the sections that would need photos this afternoon. She preferred to be out shooting, but then that was true of them all, even the photo editor. So they took turns being confined to the office, stuck at a computer, editing the photos and shipping them off to the section editors who needed them.
And working on deadline with Janet.
Angie skipped lunch so that she could leave early, and headed up to Marysville, making a detour through a Starbucks drive-through for a caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso. She pictured Mac’s eyeroll at the frou-frou drink, and grinned. It was almost like having him along.
She’d known him for almost a year. And in that time, she’d been dragged through the North Cascades hiding from people who wanted to kill her, and she’d been a part of that whole thing last fall when corrupt cops were trying to silence the good cops — and of course the journalists.
And she’d killed a man.
Killed him to save Mac’s life — no better reason than that. But still, it had changed her. As it should, she told herself.
Mac had changed her. She felt stronger. She’d been through some hard times before she met Mac. Before she came to Seattle. Coming out of that, she decided to pursue what she loved, not just what she was good at. She was good at a lot of things, but she loved photography. So she scrimped and saved and spent six months freelancing in the Seattle area before she got hired by the Examiner.
It was her dream job, really. Here she was, not yet 30, doing what she loved — and getting paid for it.
There was something special about seeing the world through a camera. It literally brought the world into focus. Capturing what she saw and then showing it to the world made a difference in how others saw the world. It was storytelling — not all that different from what Mac did with words. It really made her happy that he respected her work. He had, even before they started dating, and he still did. The fact that he’d asked her to make enlargements of her photos to hang in their house replacing the art his aunt took with her had melted her heart.
It gave her confidence, she thought now, as she drove north, drinking her frou-frou coffee. She felt like she stood taller — and when you’re barely 5-foot-tall, that mattered. She grinned at that thought and turned on NPR to catch the news.
Marysville was a 30-minute drive north of Seattle — once you got on the I-5. But getting on the freeway from the office or from home wasn’t easy. It took her almost as long to get to I-5 as it did to get from Seattle to Marysville — 37 miles. Traffic wasn’t bad yet, however, and she made good time.
Craig Anderson... she still didn’t know what to think about him. Too many secrets. Once he’d been someone else, and she thought he was probably in the process of becoming someone new — again. She wondered how many times he’d started over — and what he was actually running from.
She reminded him of someone from his darker past, and because of that he’d gone out of his way to protect her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, actually. She kept waiting for him to call in her debt. But last winter, he’d walked away from his gun shop here in Marysville. He’d left Mac a note that said there were too many people gunning for him and it was time for him to go and start over.
She felt guilty about that. They were gunning for him because he’d played both sides against each other — for his own benefit, but also for hers. And that was a debt she couldn’t repay.
She thought he was in his late 40s, a big man, with light brown, close-cropped hair and blue eyes. He’d served in Desert Storm, she knew. But that was a long time ago. What happened after that? She didn’t know.
Still, she liked the man, although she couldn’t say why.
Maybe she just had a thing for dangerous men. Her co-workers at the Examiner sure thought so. They thought of Mac as a scary dude, and they weren’t wrong. And then there were the people she seemed to be hanging out with these days — a combination of reporters, cops and FBI agents. Most of whom had seen military duty. Tough men. Strong women — people like Janet Andrews, Anna Rodriguez and Paulina Moore. She had a bad case of hero worship, she conceded.
Anderson’s gun shop was in a seedy part of Marysville — and that was saying something, because most of Marysville was a bit rundown. A blue-collar port that had fallen on hard times, Marysville had high unemployment and high crime rates. And Anderson’s shop was off the main streets and down a block next to a vacant lot and an auto repair shop. There was no one at the repair shop. She wasn’t sure it was still open.
Anderson’s shop was a cement block building with rebar in the windows — a poor man’s iron grill. He had an apartment above it, she knew, although she’d never been in it.
She parked in front of the shop and just sat there, looking at it. The ‘For Sale’ sign was still in the window. Some grass had found its way up through the crack where the shop joined the sidewalk. It all looked dusty and neglected.
What there didn’t appear to be was any sign of a break-in. Angie frowned. If there had been one, wouldn’t there be some sign? A boarded-up window? Police crime tape? Something.
Weird.
Angie got out of her car, her keys held between her knuckles. It was something she did automatically when faced with a dangerous situation — it was telling that she did it now. She beeped the car locked, and cautiously approached the door. It was locked — as it should be. She went around the back to the alley and the entrance there. Garbage cans were tidily chained to the building. No signs of forced entry there either.
She frowned. In her previous life, she’d been a forensics photographer called in to take photos of crime scenes. She examined the building looking for what she’d take a picture of here. There was nothing — some more of that determined grass — maybe she’d do a bit of weeding before she left. But there wasn’t anything indicating a crime had occurred.
She sighed. Don’t get paranoid here, she told herself. She should be glad the building hadn’t suffered damage. But now she wondered exactly who had called the police about a break-in, and why they’d thought so. She unlocked the back door, and let herself in.
“Hello?” she called out, and the sound of her voice reverberated around the empty shop. There were no weapons here, of course. It was just an empty shop slowly gathering dust. Craig had packed up all of his inventory. She didn’t know if he stored it somewhere or sold it. She wondered if the real estate agent was actually showing it to any perspective buyers? And if so, were they cleaning the place? It didn’t look like it.
The stairs to the apartment were just inside the door behind a locked door. A shop bathroom was tucked next to that door. The shop itself was basically two rooms — the showroom, and the back room where Craig had actually kept most of his inventory. She’d shot a photo essay of him and his shop as she got acquainted with him before they headed up into the north Cascades last year. It had been some good photos, although she didn’t think they’d actually gotten included. A man who had seen better days, but still buff, with his tats, and scowl, in a shop that had also seen better days.
She hesitated, not sure which direction she wanted to go first. She shrugged. The storeroom, she decided. Another key unlocked it, and there was the same coating of dust in there. No sign that anyone had been in there in some time. She locked it back up. Then she unlocked the door to the stairs and ran up them to the second floor. She had to admit she was curious about the apartment, although she thought Craig had cleared it out when he left. But Craig Anderson was an enigma, and she wondered about him. Wondered about how he lived. It all seemed so sterile.
Admit it, she told herself with a laugh — you’re just curious, period.
Still chuckling, she reached the landing and she stopped.
Something. “Hello?” she called out.
There was no answer. Well, what did she expect? She clenched her keys again, and wished she’d thought to bring along one of Mac’s guns. Lord knows, there were several around the house. They made her uncomfortable, but it was hard to argue that a weapon might be needed. Not after last year.
Still, she didn’t think in terms of I’m going to check out a place that might have been broken into, maybe I should take a gun.
Angie swallowed. Maybe she’d remember to think like that in the future.
She took a few steps forward where she could see more of the apartment. Not much to see, really. A big open room with a kitchenette at the far end. No furniture. Nothing to hide someone. Reassured by that, she walked silently forward. Facing the kitchen, there was a door to her left. It was open — Angie didn’t think she’d have the courage to open it if it wasn’t.
She went over and peered inside — a bedroom, she thought, and another door off of it, the bathroom. But this room wasn’t empty. There was a sleeping bag on the floor. She stared at it. Someone was staying here, she thought. Were they here now?
If they were, they were hiding in the bathroom, and she wasn’t going to investigate. No spooking the cornered rat, she told herself. She backed away from the bedroom, and quickly ran down the stairs and out the back door. There she stopped and let her heartbeat slow down to a more reasonable level.
This had been stupid in so many ways, Angie thought. She carefully locked the back door and got in her car and just sat there for a while, staring at the building. It still looked vacant. A bit seedy. She chewed on her lip. What to do? She could send Mac a text, she decided. He wouldn’t think her paranoid.
Well he might, she conceded. But Mac thought paranoia was a healthy response. She snorted, and with that she was able to start the car and head home.
And maybe it was that ‘healthy’ paranoia that made her look back. Someone was standing at the second-floor window. She could only see that someone was holding back the curtain, but someone was there. She was certain of it. Someone was watching her drive away.
She swallowed hard.
Never again, Angie thought grimly. She wasn’t going to do any of Mac’s errands ever again.
She hadn’t quite made it out of Marysville before she realized she was being followed. She told herself she was just being paranoid. Then she admitted she might just be spooked by the near-miss at Craig’s apartment. But she kept glancing in the rearview mirror and the black sedan was still back there. Well, she was headed to the freeway — lots of people were. Right?
So she pulled through a Wendy’s at the highway interchange and got a Dave’s Deluxe, fries, and a Coke. She was supposed to meet people at the Bohemian at 7 p.m., so she might as well eat here, and then she wouldn’t have to go home first. The banter and laughter of an evening out sounded really good right now.
She turned on the radio but turned it back off. She didn’t want to be distracted. Eating the hamburger with one hand, and driving with the other, she pulled away from the drive-through, and back onto the entrance ramp to I-5. Almost involuntarily, she glanced in her rearview mirror.
A black sedan was three cars back.
She considered that. Paranoid? How many black sedans were there? She supposed she could be more specific than sedan. But it looked like a car. It had four doors, she thought. The windows were tinted. She studied the oncoming lanes of traffic — was a black car that unusual? She thought it might be. Black SUVs? Common. Black pickups? Yup. But sedans? Lots of white, blue and that ugly beige color. Not that many black ones.
So maybe. But why would anyone be following her?
To see where she was going, she thought with a giggle that bordered on hysterics.
Or to see who she was. That wasn’t as funny.
She moved into the slow lane and slowed way down. The speed limit here was 60 mph, not that anyone was going that slow. She slowed down to 55 mph. Everyone was going past her now, and she was getting quite a few dirty looks. She rolled her eyes and watched her speed. A glance back — the car was still behind her but in the center lane.
On impulse, she took the next exit, without signaling and at the last minute. Angie glanced behind her and watched the sedan cut across a lane of traffic to exit after her. She grimaced and went down the entrance ramp and back onto the freeway.
Well, that probably told them I know I’m being followed, she thought, and wished she knew if that was good or bad. She glanced at her phone. Nothing back from Mac. That wasn’t good.
“Call Shorty,” she told her phone and was relieved when he picked up.
“Angie? You OK?”
She wasn’t sure why he asked that, but she set that aside. “I went up to Marysville to check out that report about a break-in at Craig Anderson’s apartment,” she said, and told him what had happened. “And now someone is following me home. Do I get to keep him?” It helped to joke, she found. And Shorty of all people knew a joke when he heard it.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Easy to be paranoid after that experience.”
She told him of her tests.
“OK,” he said, accepting her conclusion. “You’re headed to the Bohemian? I’m going to go park on Mercer. Be sure you take the 167 exit.”
“Will do,” Angie said, grateful for his acceptance as much as anything. “What are you going to do?”
“See if I can get a license plate number.”
That made sense. “I’ll buy you a beer at the bar,” she promised.
Sure enough when she took the exit and headed up Mercer toward Queen Anne, she spotted Shorty’s Lexus parked along the street. She made sure to be in the right-hand lane. Fifteen minutes later, she was at the bar looking for a parking spot. She kept a wary eye out for the black sedan — for anyone suspicious. It wasn’t something that she would have thought about even six months ago. But Mac had taught her to be wary.
She thought about that, about all the ways she was changing because of Mac and the people he hung out with. The cops and their cynicism. The reporters and theirs — different, but still cynical. Is this the person she wanted to be?
She loved Mac, she really did. But it was more complicated than that. She should give that some thought while he was gone. It was easier to think when he wasn’t around. Mac was larger than life, and he had definite opinions. It was hard, sometimes, to think for herself when he was so clear about how he saw the world. Just like this harebrained trip to California. For Mac it was clear. Toby Rollings was his cousin, one of ‘his people.’ He needed help, so Mac went.
But now that she could think about it, it wasn’t that simple, was it? Why didn’t he call the cops and let them do a wellness check? Why not call his uncle and talk to him about it? And what about her? Here she was sitting in her car, hyperventilating, because she went up to check on an apartment for Mac, and someone had been there. And now she was being followed.
It was all Mac’s fault, she thought grimly as she waited for Shorty to go by and find a parking place. She never got sucked into things like this before she started dating Mac.
She knew Shorty had talked to Mac about something similar after the North Cascades. He didn’t want to have a life where he had to carry, he said. He wanted to be left out those kinds of things in the future. But when they’d needed a computer expert last fall, Shorty had come. And he’d carried a gun again.
She saw him park, and got out of her car, and waited for him to join her before crossing the street. “Did you get the plate?”
He nodded. “And I called Joe Dunbar and asked him to run it. Told him you were being tailed.”
“And?”
Shorty sighed. “FBI,” he said. “I should have called Stan or Rand instead, I guess.”
Angie looked at him. “What the hell is the FBI doing following me?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “Guess we’ll find that out. I called Rand. He didn’t pick up, so I left a message about where we are. Did you say you were buying?”