Two hours later, Cassie arrived in Anaconda with thirty minutes to spare before her lunch meeting with Matthew Annan. She wanted to use the extra time to her advantage.
She cruised slowly by the Club Moderne and turned at the corner so she could surveil the side and back of it from the alley. It didn’t appear that Annan had arrived. The BMW sedan she’d seen at his house wasn’t on the street or parked in the small lot behind the building.
Aside from the heavy front door, there was a dock in the back for receiving shipments and parcels and a side door that opened to a picnic table apparently for the benefit of employees on break. The windows of the building were all shaded and barred, and apart from the glass wrap-around façade, she could see the rest was constructed of cinder block.
What she took from that was that if anything happened inside, it was unlikely that it could be seen or heard from outside. It was a mini-fortress of a bar.
Cassie parked a few blocks away and punched up Tom Wright of the Montana DCI.
“Me again,” she said as a greeting.
“Yes, Cassie?”
“I’m about to meet with the subject I was telling you about. The location is Club Moderne in Anaconda. It’s right on Park Avenue.”
“I’m familiar with it,” he said.
“You’ve been to a bar?” she asked with a smile.
“Very funny. Of course I’ve been to a bar.”
“I’ve always wondered about that.”
“Do you wonder because I’m Mormon?”
“Well…”
She could envision him rolling his eyes. Then: “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“After that insult you’ve got a favor to ask?”
“I do. I was wondering if you have any agents in the vicinity. If I get into trouble I might need some help.”
“Let me look,” Wright said. She could hear him tapping on a keyboard. Then: “No. Not today. As you know we don’t have anyone permanently assigned in Butte and our guys on assignment are in other parts of the state. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“Why not call local law enforcement?” he asked.
“Believe me, that’s the last thing I’d want to do.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sorry.”
“Well, I appreciate you checking on it anyway,” she said. But she could feel a knot in her stomach forming.
“There is a state trooper I know,” Wright said. “He’s Ron Palmer and he’s out of Butte. He’s probably within shouting distance of where you’re at.”
“My history with state troopers isn’t very good,” she said.
“Just don’t shoot him. No, Ron’s a good guy and I can vouch for him. I’ve been to church with him and his family.”
“Great,” Cassie said. “He sounds great. Please send me his cell number. Then call him and tell him if I text him in the next few hours that I’m in an emergency situation and I need his help fast.”
“What will you text him?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Something innocuous. But tell him if he receives anything from my number it means I’m in mortal danger and I need him to respond. He might want to call for backup as well from Butte or Deer Lodge or even Missoula. Anywhere but the local sheriff’s department. Can you do that?”
“That’s quite an ask,” Wright said. “But yes, I can do that.”
“Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate it.”
“Take care of yourself. I hope you don’t have to send Ron a text.”
“Me, too.”
Cassie decided not to carry her primary weapon on her person because she didn’t want it to be seen. Plus, if she was sitting down as she supposed she would be, a handgun was difficult to draw in a hurry from that position. Instead, she removed enough items from her handbag that she could place her Glock inside it as well as a small canister of pepper spray and a couple of zip ties. Her secondary five-shot hammerless .38 snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver went snugly into the outside shaft of her right cowboy boot. She fitted a small voice-activated digital recorder into an outside pocket of her purse as well and made sure it couldn’t be easily seen.
Then, as she watched, Matthew Annan’s BMW appeared and he parked his car behind the Club Moderne. From her viewing angle she couldn’t see him get out.
Cassie parked her Jeep on the street in front of the bar. She wanted it to be obvious to anyone who looked for it.
Before climbing out, she checked her watch. How far had Duplisea chased the Peterbilt, she wondered? How much time did she have before he came back?
Cassie entered the Club Moderne through the front door and paused for a moment to get her bearings. It was dark in the way only bars could be in the daytime. There were no day drinkers present—yet. A female bartender in her forties with full sleeve tattoos and a nose ring smiled and asked, “Eating or drinking today? Or both?”
“Eating only, I think,” Cassie said. “Is Matthew Annan in the back?”
The bartender smiled with familiarity. “I heard the door open back there a few minutes ago, so I’m guessing it’s Matthew. He always parks in the alley and uses that door. Would you like to look at a menu?”
“Please.”
Cassie approached the opening to the back room and hesitated. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her nerves were jangling and she hoped she didn’t look as nervous with tension as she felt.
Like the bar area, there was no one in the back room—except Matthew Annan. He was seated facing her in the last booth staring down at his phone and texting something with both thumbs. When he looked up and saw her he quickly put the phone facedown on the table and got up. He seemed genuinely pleased that she was there.
Annan wore a long-sleeved yellow shirt with a button-down collar, tight jeans, and worn ostrich-skin cowboy boots. He looked perfectly fit and attractive, damn him.
He grasped her hand in both of his and said, “I’m happy to see you, Cassie.”
“You are?”
“Of course,” he said. “But your hand is freezing. Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be,” he said with a gentle smile. “We’re all friendlies here.”
He stepped aside and swept his arm out and waited for her to slide into the booth opposite him. “After you,” he said.
Cassie took her seat and scooted across it to the middle. She wished she’d done it with a little more grace. She placed her purse on the table next to the wall with the recorder on the outside facing the space between them.
He took his seat, shook his head, and said, “I’m a little disappointed in the youth of America right now.”
“How so?”
“Well, a very nice young man and a hardworking girl responded to my ad and showed up at my house yesterday. They were really great and we got a lot done and I was expecting them to come back this morning. Suffice it to say they didn’t.”
He gestured to his phone. “Just now, I was trying to reach them to find out what the problem is when you came in.”
Which one, Cassie asked herself, had given Annan their number? She was furious but did her best not to show it.
It was good timing when the bartender showed up with a single menu and handed it to Cassie.
“Matthew doesn’t need one,” she explained.
“Alas,” he said.
Cassie looked it over and ordered an iced tea and a Cobb salad.
“They make great cheeseburgers here,” Annan said. “They’re famous for them.”
“I’m fine,” Cassie said, proud of herself.
He ordered a cheeseburger cooked rare and a draft beer. The bartender simply nodded and turned on her heel.
“So,” Annan said, “have you been able to locate the gentleman you were looking for the other day?”
“No, but I’ve learned a lot more about him.”
“Tell me,” he said. “I find your job fascinating.”
He sounded sincerely curious, she thought. She watched his face carefully as she spoke.
“He was working on a very interesting case with multiple clients. Each of those clients were defrauded out of millions of dollars. His investigation led him here.” Cassie paused and said: “To you.”
Annan seemed puzzled. He shook his head with a faint grin. “Moi?” he asked.
“You. Whether you’re going by Marc Daly, Auggie Heinze, Bill Clark, Marcus Daly, or Matthew Annan.”
Annan sat back. His eyes were locked into Cassie’s. He said, “Well, you caught me.”
She was speechless for a second.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m probably the only man on earth to ever give a woman a false name while dating her. I’m guilty as charged, Officer.”
He held out his hands upside down to her. “Slap the cuffs on me and take me to lover’s prison,” he said. Then he laughed.
“This isn’t funny,” she said. “Are you admitting to knowing Candyce Fly, Monica Weatherby, Brooke Alexander, and RuthAnne Sommers? Are you admitting to conning them all out of millions?”
“Yes to the first part and no to the second,” he said. “I certainly knew all of those lovely ladies at one time or another. But I never conned them, as you put it. Why would I do something like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cassie said. “So you could buy a multimillion-dollar mansion and move it to your hometown?”
He tapped the table and turned serious. “This is where that house belongs. This little town. This is where the money came from that built that house. It’s a long story and I guess I wouldn’t expect you to understand it all.”
He was suddenly filled with passion.
“Try me,” Cassie said as their lunches arrived, and she had to admit that the cheeseburger looked great. But she was shaken and confused by his convincing words. And more than a little attracted to him as hard as she tried not to be.
“In order to understand what I’m wrongly accused of,” he said, “you need to know more about me and this little town I live in. Once you hear about it you may find yourself looking at this allegation in an entirely different light. You’ve heard one side of the story, but I’m about to tell you another that, I pray, Cassie, will lead you to realize that you’re barking up the wrong tree. You and that PI from Florida as well, I’d add.”
“So now you admit you met him?” she asked. “Before you said you hadn’t.”
“I shouldn’t have misled you,” Annan said. “Yes, I met him. He stopped by my house and tried to extort me. When I called the police he got in his car and drove away. I haven’t seen nor heard from him since.”
“Why did you lie to me?” she asked. She was very aware of the recorder and she hoped she didn’t signal it.
“He was a very unpleasant man,” Annan said. “He was oily and filled with conspiracy theories based on nothing. I guess I didn’t want to be associated with him in your eyes. I admit now that I shouldn’t have lied to you and I’m sorry I did.”
She speared lettuce on her plate and bobbed it at him to go on.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clear the air.
“First, about this place. Anaconda is a company town, Cassie. It didn’t come to be in a natural way like other towns. That’s the first thing to understand. Back at the turn of the last century, the Copper Kings in Butte didn’t like the toxic waste their mines produced. They didn’t like breathing the noxious air or seeing how the groundwater killed their precious gardens and lawns. So, Marcus Daly—that name again—came up with the idea to build a massive copper smelter far enough away from Butte that they didn’t have to see it or smell it. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a theme to those of us who grew up here in the West, right? Big corporations move in, rape the land, exploit the workers, and eventually just pull out and leave the damage. It started when Marcus Daly founded Anaconda and built a railroad to ship the copper ore here.”
Cassie interrupted. “When you say Copper Kings, you mean the millionaires who built that row of mansions in Butte, correct?”
“Yes.”
Cassie withdrew her spiral notebook and read from it. “William Andrews Clark, Marcus Daly, F. Augustus Heinze. The names you adopted when you targeted our victims. I realized that today when I stopped there.”
Annan grinned and flushed a little. “You figured that out,” he said. “Not to mention William Rockefeller and Henry H. Rogers. The PI from Florida didn’t get that far.”
“I’m from Montana,” she said. “The names were familiar. Why did you assume those names in particular?”
“Just an in-joke,” he said. “It felt right.”
“How so?”
“I’ll get to that, Cassie. I was telling you about Anaconda.”
“Go on.”
“So Marcus Daly established the town and started building the smelter in 1900. He worked hard to lure immigrants here from the East and West. Irish, Chinese, Poles, Swedes, Serbians—dozens of nationalities. The only common theme was they were dirt-poor and desperate. He built houses for them and paid them in company scrip. He and his partners owned these people, Cassie. They controlled their lives like slaveholders. Workers weren’t free to come and go, or to bargain collectively for better wages. Meanwhile, the copper kings dined on lobster and caviar in Butte, San Francisco, and New York City.
“My great-grandfather, Frank Annan, was a smelter worker who thought this was wrong. Have you heard of him?”
“I think I saw a plaque at the courthouse,” Cassie said.
“Right, good. I paid for it,” Annan said with a nod. “It was the least I could do for a great man I never met.”
“Tell me about him,” Cassie said.
“In 1917 there was the Granite Mountain Mine Disaster. It was the worst mining disaster in US history and it happened right here. One hundred and sixty-eight miners died in it, most from smoke inhalation. A hundred and sixty-eight men, Cassie. A hundred and sixty-eight families without husbands, fathers, brothers … it was terrible. Fortunately, Frank escaped or I wouldn’t be here today.”
Annan’s eyes moistened as he told the story, Cassie noted. She didn’t think they were fake tears.
“And the owners,” he continued, “the owners who had chosen not to build in safety procedures or adequate ventilation in the mines—did next to nothing. They just hired more workers to replace the men who had died and went on with their business.
“Frank Annan said ‘enough.’ He organized the workers here to protest and strike for living wages and safety improvements. He struck for the workers to receive five dollars a day in pay, up from three dollars and eighty-five cents.
“So how did the mine owners respond?” Annan asked rhetorically. “They went to their favorite politicians and got federal troops sent here. There were actual camps and garrisons of the US Army right here in Montana to supposedly keep the peace. But they were actually government-sanctioned strikebreakers.
“During that time, seven masked men arrested my great-grandfather and lynched him for a trumped-up crime. Nobody was ever arrested or tried for it. Frank’s great legacy was that he helped establish the labor movement here. Anaconda was once known as the ‘Gibraltar of the American labor movement,’ thanks to my great-grandfather and others who risked their lives for worker’s rights.”
“That’s a good story,” Cassie said. “I’m not sure what it has to do with fleecing women out of their fortunes.”
“I love the people here,” Annan said as if he hadn’t heard her. “Those old ethnic neighborhoods still exist in one form or other. The people here are tight and they take care of each other. They’ve all been betrayed by the big corporations who brought them out here and abandoned them, but they stick together. They fight for each other, just like Frank. I owe them everything I am, and everything I can do for them until I die.
“For all of my life,” he said, “I stared at those Copper King mansions in Butte and I thought about the men who built them and how they looked down on the people here. The people they poisoned and exploited for generations. I always thought if I could that I’d buy one of those mansions and uproot it and move it back to the place it always belonged. I did it for the people.”
As he said it, Annan flushed red. He was embarrassed, she thought.
“You stole money from wealthy single women for the people?” Cassie said. “Really?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth,” Annan said, looking away. “And I didn’t steal a penny.”
“You’re telling a part of the story,” Cassie said. “There’s plenty you left out. Like Anaconda was the first city in the nation to elect an entirely socialist local government. Or that many of the early labor leaders—maybe even your great-grandfather—were card-carrying members of the Communist Party. Nobody held a gun to their heads and made them move to Montana. They came here for work to feed their families. Some might say the workers bit the hand that fed them.”
“Of course I disagree. It was a different time,” he said. “A different world.”
“But you act as if it happened yesterday,” Cassie said. “As if you’re getting revenge for something that just took place.”
“You don’t understand,” Annan said while leaning forward across the table. “Roots here run very deep. Family is everything. People here don’t forget. The blood of Frank Annan still runs through my veins.”
Cassie recalled the cemetery in town. She’d never seen such reverence for the departed.
“So what?” Cassie asked. As she posed the question she swept her hand and accidentally spilled the iced tea across the table and into her lap.
“Oh dear,” Annan said, sopping up what he could on the table with his napkin.
“I’m fine,” she lied. Her legs and lap were soaked.
The waitress appeared instantly with dry bar towels. Annan must have signaled her somehow, Cassie thought. Cassie dried out the spilled tea on her seat and soaked up the worst of it on her thighs.
“That was embarrassing,” she said.
“I never saw a thing,” Annan assured her.
“Back to our topic at hand,” she said after surreptitiously checking her wristwatch. They’d been there for more than an hour. She needed to speed things up.
Cassie looked up and took in his eyes. “You targeted those women,” she said.
“Correct. But not for the reasons you think.”
For the second time, she had no real response.
“I never conned any of them out of money,” he said. “You’ve got that all wrong.”
“Matthew, you took nearly twenty million dollars from them. And those are just the women I know about.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, you’ve got that wrong. Like I said, you only know one side of the story. I never, ever asked for money from any of them. If anything, they begged to give it to me despite my strong objections.”
“Come on,” she said. But his strong reaction threw her off a little.
“Here, let me show you,” he said. For the first time, she thought, he seemed anxious.
Annan dug into his back pocket and produced a second phone. It was a cheap burner. Cassie recognized it as the type described to her by Candyce Fly.
He activated it and scrolled through a thread of text messages. Then he handed it to her. “See for yourself,” he said.
Cassie took the phone from him and their fingers touched again. She felt a mild warm jolt that coursed completely through her.
Candy: Please tell me what I can do to help you out. I want to help.
Daly (Annan): Lord, no. I can handle this on my own. I don’t want that kind of obligation, not to mention that it could affect our relationship.
Candy: I INSIST on it. Send me your bank details.
She scrolled down further and it was more of the same. Candyce literally throwing money at his venture and Daly (Annan) refusing to take it.
She looked up at him.
“They’re all like that,” he said. “If you have the time I could show you four separate threads from the four women you mentioned. Not once did I ask for money. Not once.”
“But you took it,” she said.
“Eventually, yes. That’s true. But not before warning each of them off repeatedly. I told them all that no investment is a sure thing, that most new businesses fail. And that’s the absolute truth. Look, Cassie, I want to tell you something but I don’t want you to take it wrong.”
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“These women feel scorned,” he said. “Maybe rightly so—I’ll grant them that. No one ever likes to be rejected. But really, what we’re talking about is scorned women who want revenge on me for leaving them. I’m not saying all women are like that, not at all. I’m sure you aren’t. But you aren’t a wealthy woman who has lived her life getting everything she wants, either, I’d suspect.”
Cassie felt her neck get hot. “You’re saying that all four of these women are just crazy ex-girlfriends?”
He paused. “Well, yes. I guess that’s what I’m saying. But there’s something else. There’s another reason I reached out to them.”
Cassie started to say, “Because they were rich and single,” but she held her tongue.
“How deeply did you dig into these women?”
“I’ve read profiles of them done by a researcher,” she said.
“How far back did this researcher of yours go?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” he said. “How far did your researcher go back to see where they got their money in the first place? None of these ladies just became rich, you know.”
She had no idea where he was going. She said, “Candyce Fly and her husband were prominent Realtors in Boca Grande. RuthAnne Sommers married a Chicago tycoon. Is that what you mean?”
“No. You need to go back further. There’s something that connects them. Remember the Copper Kings.”
Cassie looked at him with a skeptical side-eye. “Are you telling me…”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Each of those women came from fortunes generated by their great-grandfathers. Candyce Fly came from Clark money. Monica Weatherby came from Daly money. Brooke Alexander came from Rockefeller money. And RuthAnne Sommers came from Heinze money even though her parents squandered most of it when she was a teenager. They all started their lives with silver spoons in their mouths. I should say ‘copper spoons’ because they were mined and smelted here in Anaconda by laborers who smothered to death in the mines or lived lives of indentured servitude. No, these women had blood on their hands.”
“That’s insane,” Cassie said. “Great-grandchildren shouldn’t have to pay for the sins of their long-gone relations.”
“Why not? My people here continue to pay.” Annan gestured toward the wall of the bar but intended to take in all of Anaconda beyond. “Many of them still live in poverty. Alcoholism and substance abuse is through the roof and unemployment is high. We’ve lost population in every census and we’re headed in a direction that will result in my town becoming a modern-day ghost town.”
“I’m not buying that this was all innocent payback,” Cassie said. “What about the websites you created that went dormant after the money was paid? What about the fake bios?”
“Most businesses fail, Cassie,” Annan said. “Especially in the economy of the last few years. I’ve won some and I’ve lost some. That’s how it goes. Just because a business fails it doesn’t mean I’m a criminal for launching it.”
“I see,” Cassie said to placate him while she scooted out of the booth and stood up. “You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. I drank too much coffee this morning, I’m afraid.”
“It’s in the hallway,” he said helpfully.
In the restroom she closed and locked the door and sent a text to Trooper Ron Palmer.
Club Moderne
801 E. Park Ave.
Anaconda
She slipped her phone into her jacket pocket and went back to the booth. As she approached Annan she noticed that he, too, had been on his phone. Again, he set it aside facedown on the table.
Had he checked in with Duplisea to find out how far he was out? If so, the race was on.
She sat down and he surprised her by reaching across the table to hold both of her hands in his. Softly. Warmly. And she didn’t pull away.
“Thank you for being so willing to listen,” he said. “It means a lot.”
She said, “What about the so-called movie about RuthAnne Sommers?”
He smiled and said, “Have you ever dealt with Hollywood types, Cassie? They promise you the moon and you end up with nothing more than a vapor trail. The reason so many of them are rich is because so many projects get financed but never get made. It goes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
Then: “Are you wet right now?”
The question came out of the blue. Was he asking about the spilled tea on her lap or …
“Candyce Fly committed suicide this week,” Cassie said.
Annan blinked and for a moment his grip released on her hands. “I didn’t know that. What a tragedy. Do you know the reason?”
“She went broke.”
“I’m so sorry if her investment in my firm contributed to that. I really am. But wasn’t she also paying the PI from Florida exorbitant fees?”
Cassie pulled away and sat back. She said, “How would you possibly know that unless he told you?”
For the first time since they’d sat down together at the booth, Annan didn’t have a quick counterargument. Instead, his face went slack.
“You almost had me going there for a while,” she said. “But it’s not me you need to convince, Matthew. You’ll need to convince a judge and jury when the three ladies you conned testify against you in court.”
Cassie checked her watch again, then glanced at the back door.
She said to him, “I think we’re done here for now.” She gathered her purse close and patted the outside of it while she stood up and faced him. “Everything we discussed is on tape. I’d caution you about trying to flee. Running is a bad look right now.”
“You taped me?” he said sadly.
“Yes.”
“Is that legal?”
“Yes.”
Annan reached out and picked up his primary phone and checked the screen. He was no doubt checking to see if there was a reply from Duplisea, Cassie guessed.
“He was out chasing a Peterbilt truck,” she said. “Maybe he’s still chasing it.”
When Annan looked up he simply looked depressed, she thought. It pulled at her heartstrings even though she knew better.
“It doesn’t have to end this way,” he said.
“Matthew, I’m single but I’m not rich. So it never really started.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“No,” Cassie said, “you’re actually worse. We need to have a conversation about what happened to Spengler. And your county sheriff, for that matter.”
He looked up at her sharply. “Those aren’t on me,” he said.
“Until this second I wasn’t sure they were linked. But thanks for clearing that up.”
Annan slumped back in the booth and rubbed his face with both hands. When he moaned he sounded pathetic, she thought. Also not a good look.
He said, “It’s not too late to stop this before it gets much worse.”
Cassie was confused. “Stop what?”
He tapped the back of his phone with his fingertips. “You must think I’m stupid,” he said. “Don’t you think I got the plates run on those two kids who showed up yesterday to work for me?”
Cassie was chilled to the bone and couldn’t speak.
“April Pickett and Ben Dewell,” Annan said. “They gave me false names but it took a single phone call to a law enforcement friend to find out who they really are.”
He paused and looked up at her before he added: “And where they live.”
“No,” she whispered. Had Annan diverted Duplisea’s return to go to Bozeman instead? Were Ben and April being targeted as they spoke?
“No,” she said again. “Leave them out of this…”
At that moment the back door was shoved open so hard it struck the wall with a bang.
Undersheriff Doug Duplisea had arrived. His bulk filled the doorway. He gripped the top of his service revolver in its holster.
“It looks like you’re coming with me, Miss Dool,” he said. He looked angry and no doubt humiliated from his fruitless pursuit of her that morning.
She turned and glanced over her shoulder to see the waitress slip down behind the bar. Cassie knew he had the drop on her and there was no place to run. She was terrified but she was also glad Duplisea was in Anaconda and not Bozeman. Better her than those kids …
Then, from outside: “Hey, mister.”
She recognized the slurred voice.
“Kyle, no!” she cried.
“Hey, mister,” Kyle repeated.
Duplisea rolled his eyes and turned around in the doorway. His revolver cleared the holster …
BOOM!
The undersheriff staggered back a few steps. He glanced over at Annan. He was confused.
Outside, Cassie saw Kyle eject a spent shell from his 20-gauge shotgun and pump a new one into the receiver. He did it dutifully with his tongue out. Her readers poked out of his front breast pocket. She’d apparently left them at the diner in Butte and Kyle, being Kyle, had followed her in order to return them.
Bless you, Kyle …
Cassie ducked to the side near the booth to both block an exit attempt from Annan and to avoid getting hit from cross fire. At the same time, Duplisea regained his footing and raised his weapon again and pointed it toward Kyle.
There was another BOOM. The undersheriff spun a half-turn and crashed to the floor. His chest was a ragged floral bloom of red.
Cassie quickly recovered from her shock and kicked Duplisea’s gun away from his twitching hand. She turned on Annan and commanded, “Stay right where you are.”
“Cassie,” he pleaded, using her name just one more time, “let’s be reasonable here.”
She pulled the Glock from her purse and trained it on him. “I’ve shot better men than you before,” she said, knowing it probably wasn’t true.
A distant siren increased in volume. It was coming from the direction of the interstate.
Then to Kyle: “Put the shotgun down and step away from it. I don’t want anyone to think you’re an active shooter.”
“A what?” Kyle asked.
“Just do it please, Kyle.”
Kyle shrugged and lowered his gun to the gravel of the parking lot. He did it gingerly so as not to scratch the stock. The siren got louder. It was just a couple of blocks away.
To Kyle, Cassie mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
He smiled awkwardly and gave her two thumbs-up.