Mac went around the block to head south on University Way, planning to turn right onto 45th, go out to I-5 and then to the 520. He could avoid the U District proper that way. He was just about to make the turn onto 45th, when a police car lit up behind him. Shit.
He looked at Tim. “You have Stan Warren’s phone number?” he asked.
Tim looked at him like he was out of his mind. “You think I would have the phone number for my mother’s lover?” he demanded.
Well that did sound a bit stupid. “Call Janet then,” he said. “You have her number, don’t you?” If not, that was one he had memorized.
Mac glanced back at the police car, and then went through the light to continue on University Way. The campus police station was just a few blocks further on. The police car behind him hit the siren. Just a pulse, in case he hadn’t seen the lights.
Tim called, and then held the phone where Mac could talk into it. “I need Stan,” he said tersely. “I’ve got a cop on my tail.”
“I’ll get him,” Janet said.
The siren was steady now.
Mac pulled over in front of the police station and rolled down his window. He kept his hands on the wheel where the cop could see them. He glanced at Tim. “Can you record without losing the call?”
Tim nodded.
“Do it, when he starts to talk,” Mac murmured.
“Get out of the car,” the officer said from a few feet back.
“What’s the problem, officer?” Mac asked.
“Out of the car!” the officer repeated.
“I’m not comfortable with that unless you tell me why you stopped me,” Mac countered. “And I need to see your badge too.”
“Out of the car,” the officer repeated. “Or I’ll arrest you for resisting arrest.”
Mac heard Stan’s voice on the phone. “I’m reaching for the phone,” Mac said. “I have FBI Agent Stan Warren on the line. Since you won’t tell me why you stopped me, perhaps you’ll tell him?” He held the phone out the window, and put it on speaker.
“Badge number and name,” Stan Warren said coldly.
“I already asked,” Mac said, he looked at the officer in his sideview mirror. “Officer? In case you can’t hear him, FBI Agent Warren wants your badge number and name.”
“And what makes you so special that you can call the FBI for a routine traffic stop?” the officer asked. Mac thought the anger was real, but that the officer also knew this was no routine traffic stop.
“Not so routine if you won’t tell me why you stopped me,” Mac countered.
“I’ve got a BOLO,” the officer said. “For your plates. And I’m to take you into custody and call for backup.”
Mac went still. “Anyone special to call for backup?” he asked quietly.
“Sergeant McBride,” the officer answered. Mac still wasn’t sure if this officer was in on this or there truly was a BOLO out for him. If there was, he needed to get to the safe house ASAP. He grimaced.
A man walked up to Mac’s vehicle and stopped in the headlights so Mac could see who it was. Rand. He was holding up his shield for the officer to see.
“Officer, I’m FBI Agent Rand Nickerson,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
“I’ve pulled him over because there’s a BOLO on his plates,” the man answered. “And he’s failing to comply with my order to get out of the car.”
“Did you call for backup already?” Rand asked.
Good question, Mac thought. Because this was going to be a clusterfuck real soon if he had.
“I called in his plates,” he said. “I’d just gotten the BOLO when he drove by.”
“Name and badge number,” Rand said. “I’ll need it for my report.”
Mac could hear a police siren. He glanced at Tim. “Stay quiet,” he said softly. “And if I say ‘down’ you tuck into the footwell ASAP, you got it?”
Tim nodded.
The man rattled it off. Mac made a mental note of the name. It wasn’t on their list, unless he was in the Sensei database. But they could check that later. He wondered suddenly if they could get a directory of that church and cross-check it?
“So was there a traffic violation?” Rand asked.
“No sir, just the BOLO.”
“All right, then,” Rand said. “You’ve notified your desk sergeant. You’ve turned him over to the FBI. And you can notify the sergeant of that as well, and then you’re good to go.”
“Yes sir,” the officer said doubtfully. “I’ll tell my sergeant. See what he says.” He went back to his car, and Mac could hear the sounds of the car radio, but not the conversation.
He came back. “He says you’re free to go. They’ll contact the FBI if they need to bring you in.”
“Thank you,” Mac said. He started the car. He wanted off the road and now.
“What’s this all about anyway?” the officer blurted out.
“Got me,” Mac said. “Ask him.” He pointed at Rand, who rolled his eyes.
Mac pulled into traffic and left Rand standing there. He spoke toward the phone. “I’m coming in,” he said. “And I’m parking this car.”
“Good,” Stan said. “I’m staying on the line until you get here.”
“Did you call Rand?”
“Janet did,” he said. “Rand was just leaving the UW Medical Center. You lucked out.”
He had. Mac blew out the breath he’d been holding, and drove slowly through campus to get on Montlake and go to the 520 that way.
“What was that all about?” Tim demanded.
“He wanted to get me out of the car, and then use some pretext to search it,” Mac said as it all clicked.
“And?” Tim pushed.
“And, explaining why I have a lot of guns stored in the trunk might take a while,” Mac said. “So, they take me in, put me in holding. And I guarantee you, I wouldn’t be coming out. Not alive.”
Tim was silent for the rest of the way over the bridge. “Where is this safe house?” he asked. “Bellevue?”
“Even better,” Mac said, still shaken by how close that had been. A fucking traffic stop? “Medina.”
Tim frowned. “Along the lake?”
“Yup,” Mac said, and he turned into the gate. Benton Weeks was there; he stopped Mac, asking for Tim’s ID. Tim gave it to him. “Add him to the list,” Mac said. “He’s a consultant.”
Benton laughed. “Wait until you see the other two ‘consultants.’”
“They’re here?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, Shorty brought them through when he came home from school. They’re something else.”
Mac looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“You know what anime is? Manga?”
“Yeah,” Mac said, slowly.
“That’s them,” Benton said with a laugh. “They’re into cosplay, and they’re dressed as characters from Manga strips.”
Mac wasn’t sure what that meant, and it made him feel old. Well, pushing 30, he thought wryly. He was old. He glanced at Tim and saw he was equally clueless. Not that it made him feel better. He knew Tim was clueless. He doubted Tim had seen a television set until he came to college.
“Joy,” Mac said, and he pulled on through the gate and down to the house.
Stan came out to meet him, and Janet was right behind. Mac parked next to the door. “We’re going to stash these guns around the house where we might need them – and where the kids can’t get to them,” Mac said. “Might as well do it now. And then this car gets parked where we can be sure no one can see it. Who else is driving their own car?”
Turned out Rand and Angie were driving their cars still. And Juan Moore. He thought about Juan. He was going about his business unbothered. Mac wondered why. Or maybe the question was that they needed to revisit was why was that house attacked?
Stan was grim as Mac unlocked the back of his 4-Runner. Mac had a separate key for the gun box that replaced the spare tire slot under the floor of the back cargo area. Stan stared at the guns. “Jesus, Mac, I’ve seen gun shops with less inventory,” he said. He shook his head in disbelief.
Mac shrugged. He’d learned early that you were vulnerable without a weapon at hand. Some people collected art. He collected weapons, guns mostly and a few combat knives. He didn’t see what the big deal was. And his collection was about quality not quantity — not like the idiots last year who would hang a broken-down shotgun next to an tricked out AR-15 and be equally proud of them both.
He had liked that certificate program for the idiots that Malloy had running though. Certificates and group photos with their weapons. He smirked.
“There’s a locked armory on the third floor,” Stan said with another shake of his head. “We can put the hard-core stuff there. But I’m not sure everyone is carrying. Paulina?” He glanced at Tim, and placed him. “Tim? You know how to shoot?”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “A rifle or a shotgun.”
Mac handed him a 12 gauge Remington 870 Express Magpul tactical shotgun. “Don’t let it be too far from you. But we have kids here, so be aware.”
“Got it,” Tim said. He cycled the shotgun a few times, shouldered the gun, eyed it closely, then loaded one shell into the chamber and eight shells into the extended magazine. “Holds a few more rounds than a hunting shotgun. Got any extra ammunition?”
Mac handed him a box of 00 Buckshot. “Janet?”
“She’s carrying my Sig Sauer .380 auto,” Stan said. “And that scares me to death.” He looked at her. “Best you wait and throw the gun at someone.”
Janet grimaced, because it was an old joke, but she didn’t argue either. “It’s been 20 years, but I’d do better with a rifle myself,” she admitted.
“Can’t walk into the newsroom with a rifle,” Mac said. “Keep the pistol.”
There was a locked storeroom just inside the back door, and Janet went to find a key for it. A selection of easy-to-use weapons went in there. The rest they carted up to the third-floor armory. And holy shit, Mac thought, it was truly an armory. Nice racks to hold things. Locked cases. He nodded. It reminded him that he’d left his Glock 17 9mm in the guardhouse. Well it didn’t hurt to have an extra weapon up there. He took another pistol, a Glock 19 9mm and added it to his backpack and strapped on an ankle holster with a Glock 42 compact .380. Then he went back down and moved his truck into the multicar garage tucked discreetly to the south of the house near the trees.
Paulina handed him a sandwich when he came back in. He took it gratefully. Roast beef, spicy mustard. “Do you shoot?” he asked.
She shrugged slightly. “Been a long time,” she said.
He showed her the guns in the locked closet. “Anything you can use?”
She nodded. “The hunting rifle with iron sights,” she said. “Leave it there, and give me the key to the closet. I’m the one who’s likely to be here if we need weapons.”
Mac handed her the key. Before this was over, he was going to get her story.
He glanced at the time. “Meeting in 10,” he called, and heard people start to move. Paulina and Carolina took the kids upstairs to get them to bed.
Two young women had joined them. They were dressed in what he would have called goth, but apparently was now called Manga cosplay. Both had black hair. One, Misaki, had a black bustier on over a short skirt with thigh high stockings that showed skin below the skirt; her hair was cut straight at chin length. And no man would ever be able to describe her face, Mac thought with amusement. That band of skin below her skirt focused a man.
The other’s hair was pulled up on top with an off-center ponytail? Was it called that if it was on top of her head? Hell if he knew. Ruri wore a black silk tank over silk black pants. Snug pants that ended at her ankles. She had short, high-heeled boots on. He couldn’t see Misaki’s shoes. And they were both wearing heavy makeup that especially emphasized their eyes and made them huge.
It was actually a good disguise. He’d be hard pressed to describe them in any concrete fashion. That black hair wasn’t natural. They had dark eyes, and were of medium height, and build. He had no clue as to their age. But given the way Joe Dunbar was eyeing them, he hoped they weren’t jailbait.
But fuck, if Manga featured women who looked like this, he might need to check it out.
“OK, developments,” Mac said. “They had a BOLO out for my plates, and damn, I don’t want to come that close again to being brought in by crooked cops.” He told them what had happened. And he introduced Tim Brandt, as his go-to expert on church and religion in the Seattle area. Tim just nodded. He knew some of the people from a year ago. And well, if he and Janet wanted to claim each other, they could.
“Shorty?” Mac said.
Shorty introduced his ‘consultants.’ “Misaki and Ruri,” he said. “They’re experts in phone hacking. We’re setting up a computer room on the third floor. Tomorrow, leave your phones behind. We’ll give you some better encryption when you get home. And we’ll begin to reverse hack what they did last Friday night.”
Misaki, the woman who was wearing the bustier and skirt, rolled her eyes. “We’re phreaks,” she said bluntly. “What we do isn’t necessarily legal. If that bothers you, don’t ask questions. If you’re the law, and you need your phone legal, tell us when you drop it off. If you just need deniability? That’s fine. We’re not going to share our methods with you, anyway. And when this gig is done? You never met us. Don’t know us. Can’t remember our names — which aren’t our real names anyway.”
Mac glanced around the room. No one seemed to have any objections to that, and Joe Dunbar was in love. He snickered.
“Janet?” Mac said. “Where are we at with record searches?”
“Getting there,” she said. “How are you all doing with your database from the Sensei?”
“Getting there,” Shorty echoed. “I’ve got a list of cops who were getting his newsletter. But we need more than that. Because Rand is one of them. Mac, too, for that matter.”
There was laughter. “Can we see what they’ve posted on Facebook under their user names?” Mac asked.
“Maybe,” Shorty agreed.
“And I’ve got another database I want you to try for,” Mac said. “Valley View Community Church.”
There was silence. “You want me to hack a church?” Shorty demanded. People laughed. Mac finally got his laughter under control enough to say, “They’ve got a church directory. Cross-tab it?”
Shorty frowned. “Why?”
“They just hired a new pastor — the guy who was Sheriff Norton’s pastor in Mount Vernon,” Mac said slowly. “And they’ve given Steven Whitman a job as staff director. That church is how the anti-abortion organizations got the names of reporters for the pregnancy care center story a year ago. We’re still missing a component of this — the computer folks. And maybe our ‘phone consultants’ can answer that question.”
Mac told them about the gun purchases going through Andy Malloy’s gun range. “A lot of gun purchases,” Mac said. “Record keeping is really bad at the street level. But I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the log books that gun dealers have to keep.”
“Would the gun range have to keep one? They’re buying right?” Rand asked, as he thought it through.
“They’ve got to be reselling,” Mac said. “Or Andy Malloy has come into a source of money he didn’t have four months ago.”
Tim looked up at that, but he didn’t say anything. He jotted something down on the notepad in front of him.
Follow the money, Mac thought suddenly. Journalism axiom. Were they doing that?
Something to consider.
He saw Joe maneuvering on his crutches, heading outside. Shorty was talking to Misaki and Ruri. Janet and Tim were talking off to one side quietly. Angie slid her arm around his waist, and he automatically looped his arm around her shoulders. Rand came up to him.
“Thanks, man,” Mac said sincerely. “That was close.”
“Too close,” Rand agreed. “Janet called me while Stan was talking to you, and I was already on the move. We lucked out. You think their plan was to toss you in jail on a weapons charge? That would be ironic.”
“Wouldn’t it?” Mac said. “Those guns are all legal, but it might take a bit to convince a cop of that. And in the meantime, I’m cooling my heels in a jail cell. And I do not want to bet on my chances of surviving that.” He had a few guns that weren’t legal. Ones without serial numbers that couldn’t be traced. But they were in a lock box under his bed at the house. Well two of them were. The third had gone into the harbor when it looked like Parker was framing him to take the fall for a cop shooting.
Rand nodded. “So, the kid? What’s his story?”
“Someone who was helpful last year with the Army of God story,” he said. “I stopped by to ask him some questions and he insisted on coming along. He’s OK.”
He hoped Tim was OK. He was putting a lot of faith in Tim having learned something from the shootout at Jehovah’s Valley. He glanced again at Janet. He swallowed hard. Tim had saved Janet’s life that day.
You assemble a team, and then you go in and blow things up, he thought with a mental laugh. “I’m going up on the roof for a while,” he said. He looked down at Angie. “Come up with me? And Rand, I know where the spotter has been, I think. Did you see that RV parked across the street? Wanna bet that house is up for sale?”
Rand frowned. “That would be interesting.”
“Ask Shorty for a list of vacant properties and properties for sale on that street.”
Mac walked out the back door and up the outside staircase. He sat in the lawn chair that Joe had had someone bring up for him and pulled Angie down into his lap.
“What’s bugging you?” she asked. “Something is. Beyond all this.”
Mac was silent. Was something bugging him? “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Tell me about your photos from today.”
“I have one of the RV,” she said. “It was out of place. None of the other houses had RVs or extra cars or anything sitting around. Be weird if Craig was inside watching us while I was shooting photos of him.”
He snorted. “What else did you see?”
She considered that. “Rand talked to some more people,” she said slowly. “People are really bigots, aren’t they? And the thing is they don’t realize it, and would deny it indignantly if you called them on it. But they all had these theories about drug dealers and gang wars. Most of them didn’t even know Nick was a police officer. Didn’t know their names. They kept to themselves, one neighbor said as if there was something wrong with that. And none of them had ever invited them over either. It was weird. And Rand just made sympathetic noises and let them talk.”
“Had they seen the story in the paper?” he asked.
“One man had,” she said. “He commented on it. Said the newspaper got it wrong. He’d talked to the cops directly, and it was a gang war over drugs. If Nick was a cop, obviously he was a dirty one.”
Mac’s thoughts drifted from that. He did feel off-kilter, he admitted. He didn’t know why. What is my objective here?
Story.
Catch the bad guys.
Keep my people safe.
“Too many people,” he said out loud. “I don’t even know how many people I’m taking care of here.”
Angie considered that. “You see that as your responsibility? To take care of everyone? There are three cops here, Mac. And a lot of capable people.”
Mac nodded. She was right about all of that.
“I told Lindy when I decided to go with Janet rather than go be safe with her, that you have three groups of people. The bad guys. Your squad. And civilians,” Angie said, enumerating them on her fingers. “And I said I wanted to be part of your squad, not civilians. And you were good with that in the Cascades. You have to be reminded periodically, but that’s OK. But here? You’ve got a lot of people, who are not quite squad, not quite civilians. And you’re going crazy trying to protect them all. If you thought of us all as squad? People who could take care of themselves? What would you do?”
Mac considered that. “I’d stop playing defense and go on offense,” he said.
“Then maybe you should think about what that would look like,” Angie said. “But that’s not what’s bothering you.”
He told her about Tim’s comment about a team. “I think of myself as a loner,” he admitted. “I am a loner. But Tim was right too. I’ve always been a part of a team. And now there are all these people I care about — look at all of them! They seem to be sprouting from the cracks in the sidewalks!”
Angie giggled at that, and he smiled at her.
“But Angie, two years ago? When I went after Parker, I had my old Marine squad that I hadn’t talked to in ages. I had Lindy. And I had one friend, Shorty. And Janet, and damned if she didn’t confuse the hell out of me. She seemed to think she was supposed to have my back. Just took it for granted.”
He shook his head. Janet still baffled the hell out of him.
“And now there’s all these people, and you care about them,” Angie said softly. “And you’re terrified you’re going to lose one of them.”
His throat got tight. “Yeah,” he said finally. “And it will be my fault.”
She shook her head at that. “No,” she said firmly. “It won’t. That’s the problem. You aren’t used to having people you care about, and here you are in this crisis. The rest of us learn as we grow up. We learn that there are losses and accidents happen, and none of it is our fault.”
He laughed a bit. “How did you get so wise?” he said teasingly.
She smiled at him. “Just like that,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault that my baby brother fell and hurt his head when I was 5 years old. It wasn’t my fault that my parents divorced when I was 12. It wasn’t my fault...,” she trailed off. And then she took a deep breath and continued, “It wasn’t my fault that I fell in love with a cop, and when he abused me, his cop buddies rallied around to protect his reputation rather than me.”
Mac had wondered about her story. He’d accepted she might never be able to talk about it. But here they were. “How did you meet him?” he asked quietly.
She smiled, and he thought there were tears in her eyes. “I was the crime scene photographer,” she said.
He held her tight while she cried. His eyes burned. Bastards, he thought. He didn’t dare ask her where. He’d go after them. She’d gotten out, filed a restraining order, cost the abuser his job in the end. And then she’d come to Seattle and started over. He’d known that much. He hadn’t known about the police angle. She’d worked there, and they still protected him, not her?
Bastards, he thought again.