CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

Micah reclined on his couch, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. He scrolled through recent news, but couldn’t care about much of it. This politician said that other politician lied, this company bought that company, this doctor said that doctor’s research was bunk.

Any casual glance at the headlines made the world seem like an awful place.

He wanted to be the kind of person who could read the news in the morning with an unaffected attitude, but he couldn’t seem to do it. In his first couple months of sobriety, reading the news made him angry. All that injustice in the world. He’d internalize the plight of some person or group who had been wronged, and then let it ruin the rest of his day.

Now, he found he didn’t care. Or not that he didn’t care about current events, but he couldn’t find a way to apply it to his life. With a little sobriety under his belt, he understood exactly how powerless he was to change most things in the world.

It’s not as if he could become an activist and risk having his face achieve public visibility. That would be a death sentence, and not only for him.

“Maybe caring about the news is a second-year sobriety task,” Micah said to the severed head of the Boba Fett action figure, sitting on his coffee table.

Boba said nothing, and Micah narrowed his eyes at the miniature bounty hunter. “Don’t look at me like that. What are you doing about all the world’s evils?”

Still, Boba remained silent.

Micah dropped his phone on the couch next to him and stared out the window at the outline of the mountains to the west. Snow capped the peaks, but none of that had made its way to Denver yet. Across the room from Micah sat a pair of Rossignol ski boots, fresh out of the box. The handful of times Micah had been skiing previously, he’d rented. But this was supposed to be the winter that he would fully embrace the Colorado lifestyle and brave the I-70 traffic on weekends to log a few runs at the Summit County resorts. Maybe Vail, if he was feeling fancy.

Not this coming weekend, though, because he’d probably be knee-deep in researching Daisy’s claims about Nathan.

He picked up his laptop to conduct some searches on Nathan Auerbach. Linking him to Daisy proved easy because she tagged him in any picture they appeared in together. People made hardly any effort to hide their tracks online.

Nathan and his brother Alec were both members of a country club, were avid golfers, and frequently attended car shows. After some digging, Micah eventually uncovered that they owned a timeshare in Steamboat Springs.

“How many properties do these rich assholes have?” Micah asked the room.

But, none of this digging turned up anything illegal. Nothing dubious or strange. Just a couple of playboy white guys with lots of money to burn.

As Micah set the laptop aside to rub his eyes, his phone buzzed. A text from one of the few people who knew his secret:

 

Thought you should see this.

 

Below that was a link to a blog. Micah clicked it and watched as elements popped onto the screen, including the title: INSIDE WITSEC.

This was a blog about Witness Protection, declaring it a corrupt organization that wasted taxpayer money to give hardened criminals the life they’d always wanted. Freedom, a new identity, a fresh start.

Micah’s pulse quickened as he scrolled through recent posts. So much insider information here. He’d never seen anything like this before.

Micah could agree with some of the author’s assertions. WitSec was flawed. It certainly did take some bad people and set them free, based on the theory that the results (putting high-level bad guys in jail) justified the methods (freeing lower-level killers and drug dealers). But it wasn’t as if WitSec people led the good life. Always looking over your shoulder, having to erase your past and links to anyone you might care about.

Having to leave the dead behind, and pretend you weren’t allowed to mourn for them. Like Pug. Thinking that name made Micah’s teeth grit. His best friend, dead because of the fucking Sinaloa cartel.

Dead because of Micah.

As he clicked back through the site, something caught his interest. There weren’t many posts on the blog yet, but yesterday’s entry said that upcoming posts would expose several people in Witness Protection. Both their old names and their new names. Would out murders, rapists, white-collar criminals.

The hair on the back of Micah’s neck stood at attention.

He scoured the blog for personal information about the author, but couldn’t find anything. No byline on the posts, no contact page. He performed a WhoIs search for the website, but couldn’t find any identifiable information about who had registered it. Someone who’d covered his tracks to remain anonymous.

A page rank search showed the website was reasonably popular and had been gaining popularity over time. People would see this. People would read it and share posts on social media. What if Micah found his own real name on this site someday, exposing him as a former employee of such a ruthless organization?

He wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. Like the news, he had no power here.

Micah clicked the link on the site to subscribe to new posts by email, and he entered an anonymous email he used from time to time. Then he closed the site on his laptop because he had to let it go. Had to move on.

With a sigh, he returned to researching Nathan. Daisy’s boyfriend lived in Broomfield, a suburb of Denver halfway between downtown and the edge of the mountains. His title was Logistics Manager, and he worked as a consultant for several companies around the Denver metro. His profile picture on Facebook showed a man with a square jaw, jet-black hair, and blue eyes. A five o’clock shadow that Micah guessed was perpetually in that neatly groomed status. Like the facial hair a romance novel cover model might wear.

After a quick search for average salaries for Logistics Managers, Micah did some math. It didn’t seem that Nathan would be able to afford his own four-bedroom house in Broomfield plus the downtown condo—not to mention the Steamboat timeshare—on what he was making consulting. Even at the upper salary range, no way could he afford all of those mortgages.

One point in Daisy’s favor. This guy was making extracurricular money, no doubt about that.

Nathan’s brown-eyed twin brother Alec was something like a traveling salesman. Medical device sales, which Micah imagined could explain some of the extra money, but there was no evidence anywhere that Alec was contributing to Nathan’s mortgages. No proof of them having any financial connection, other than the timeshare.

And then there was the cop angle. Daisy had said she’d seen Nathan and Alec with some cops that she recognized, but she couldn’t recall any of their names. Only that one of them worked in Boulder, was chubby, and had a furry mustache.

Investigating police officers who may or may not be corrupt could land Micah in a world of hurt. Only a whiff of his involvement could lead to any manner of unpleasant endings. That was the most difficult to believe of Daisy’s claims, and the most dangerous one for Micah to investigate.

No. Micah would keep his focus on Nathan Auerbach, and not dig in too deeply unless he had something solid to go on. Be like a leaf on a tree: waiting, watching, ready to drop if the opportunity presented itself.