“This is why your file is sealed?” I asked. “Your grandfather didn’t want anyone to know?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Richie said.
He explained how his sister Vanessa was supposed to be the agent in the family.
“She was a natural athlete. Smart. Funny. The kind of person people are drawn to without knowing why.”
I noted the past tense in Richie’s speech.
“One day, we woke up and found her. Hung in the garage.” Richie’s voice broke as he spoke. “Those bastards did it to her. My dad. My grandpa. All their pressure.”
And suddenly it made sense. Richie wasn’t a volunteer. He was a recruit. A replacement for his sister.
This also answered the question of how he’d gotten access to Bureau data to do his research project for three summers before the Academy.
“So the reason you chose PAR?” I asked.
“Let’s just say I looked at the team,” Richie said. “All of your mistakes. Shooter’s. Frank’s. I figured—here, everyone flames out. I will, too.”
We went silent for a minute, and then Shooter spoke. “Don’t worry, rook. We’ll do our best, all right?”
We hung up, and I looked to Shooter. The helicopter was ready, but Cassie still hadn’t found us a location.
“You’re getting sent to Omaha,” I said.
She took this in. “Where are you going?”
I smiled. “If we do this, where I’m going is the unemployment line.”
My phone buzzed with a text. A location from Cassie.
“Well, shit,” Shooter said. “Neither of us were ever really good at politics, were we?”
“No, we were not.”
“Maybe Nebraska isn’t so bad.” She extended her hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Gardner.”
“Same,” I said, shaking. “Let’s save the old man.”
We ran across the tarmac and climbed into the helicopter.
The location Cassie supplied was a twenty-three-acre plot of land on the edge of the Angelina National Forest, some fifty miles away. A place we could get to in twenty minutes in the MD30.
If our theory was correct, Banning had left the Dallas safe house more than two hours ago. Which put him at the property sometime in the last fifteen minutes.
Ethan Nolan, meanwhile, had probably headed south to the Y in the Neches River this morning around 5 a.m. If he took the water north from there, he would have beaten Banning to the hunting compound by a good hour.
Shooter turned to me as we lifted off, speaking through the headset. “You think Banning brought his cuffs with him?”
“Doubtful,” I said. “But we know he brought his weapon.”
I reminded Shooter about the steps that Nolan had taken with Tignon and Fisher, how he’d needed some sort of conversation with them before he killed each man.
“So what do you do if you’re Ethan Nolan, Jo?” I asked. “He’s a hunter. You’re a hunter. He needs to talk.”
She thought for a moment. “If I could get there first, I’d get to higher ground. Use a bow and arrow.”
“Take Banning down,” I confirmed. “But not kill him.”
“Not right away,” Shooter said. “Once I neutralized other threats, I’d come out of my hiding spot and question Banning. Make him explain to me why he screwed over my old man.”
The helicopter shifted, its blades picking up choppy wind. “Let’s pull up a lay of the land,” I said. “Of this compound.”
In a minute, we were looking at a satellite map on Shooter’s phone.
“Higher ground looks to be here.” I pointed.
“True,” Shooter said. “But if Nolan is trying to hit the director with an arrow, that point is too high to be accurate with a bow, Gardner. You’d shoot a rifle from that elevation.”
I pointed at a gray area to the south. “And this?”
“Call that the opposite of high ground. Most likely an old mining quarry.”
I looked at the brown Beretta GTX shoes that Shooter had on. “Good boots,” I said.
“Always.”
“Then we’ll put you down here.” I motioned at a dip in the valley. “You hump it the rest of the way on foot. Get up to that peak.”
We gave directions to the pilot on where to drop her, and Shooter and I went back to the map. A fire road circled the property, running from the quarry over to a cabin. Halfway along it, the road came to a T and cut south, down the mountain toward Highway 63. This was how Banning would arrive. The ridge below the T was where I would be dropped.