Broken Trust. Sharon Dunn

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ daughter was a cruel reminder of what he had missed out on.

      Their breakup had been the start of his spiritual awakening and his decision to address his own issues. The wounds from his childhood ran deep and he was far from perfect. But with God’s help, he healed one day at a time.

      Samuel lifted a finger off the steering wheel and pointed toward a squat brick building. “Sheriff’s office is over there.” He brought the truck to a stop. “I’ll call you in four or five hours, so we can update each other on our progress. Good luck.”

      Wyatt got out of the truck and crossed the street. He entered the building where a dark-haired female deputy stood beside a file cabinet with an open drawer.

      The deputy, whose name tag read Mitchell, studied Wyatt for a moment. “You’re the fed, right?”

      Wyatt resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Despite their effort at blending in, something always gave them away. “Christine must have told you.”

      Deputy Mitchell pulled a file. “Sheriff Norris said you might be stopping by and that I should help you as much as I could.”

      At least that was encouraging. The deputy had been briefed, and Christine had laid out an expectation of cooperation. “Is Christine around?” He ran his hands through his dark hair.

      “She has stepped out for a moment.” Mitchell opened the file and flipped through the loose pages. “She should be back shortly.”

      “I’m right here.”

      Wyatt whirled around to see Christine standing in the doorway. The hard line of her mouth and the narrowed eyes suggested that she wasn’t happy to see him. She must have known he wouldn’t give up easily or she wouldn’t have told the deputy about him.

      Deputy Mitchell yanked her coat off the back of a chair and turned to Christine. “I’ve got a call about a fence dispute that has gotten ugly. If you want to hold down the fort, the two gentlemen have agreed to meet at the café across the street.”

      “Sure, Lisa, that will be fine.” Christine took off her own coat and hung it on a rack as Lisa slipped out of the office. Her brown hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and she looked sharp in the sheriff’s uniform. She picked up the file Deputy Mitchell had pulled out of the cabinet. “No luck finding the camp from the helicopter?”

      Wyatt shook his head. “Not yet. Night searches allow us to look for lights in remote places. But we need to limit those. Don’t want to raise suspicions. Emmett and Tyler’s pictures are in every field office and resident agency in the Northwest, so he won’t get far once he decides to surface. We think he’ll stay hidden as long as he can, but we don’t want to spook him.”

      She sat down at her desk and clicked on her computer. “If you like, we can look at a map together. I might be able to give you some insight into where to look.”

      “We can do that, but I—” Despite the difficult position he had put her in, she was trying to be helpful. “What I really need is for you to think about everything you have dealt with since you got elected. Maybe even something you noticed before you took office. Groups like this often start out benign and become radicalized because of one or two members. They might start off with vandalism of federal property or something like that.” He detected the same flash of agitation in her features he had seen last night.

      “I did think about it. I have the same thing to tell you this morning that I told you last night. There has not been any crime that set off alarm bells for me as being symptomatic of a buildup to domestic terrorism.” She looked away from him and tapped on her keyboard. “You will recall that I was trained to know what to look for with that sort of thing.”

      Tension filled the air between them. She didn’t like being pressed, but he needed answers. He stepped toward her desk. “One of Lansky’s emails we intercepted specifically mentioned Mohler County. Roosevelt is symbolic to these guys because of what happened here ten years ago, like Ruby Ridge and Waco were for Timothy McVeigh. I thought maybe if you had a night to sleep on it, something would come to mind.”

      Christine flipped open the file. “I checked on what has been done to find Tyler Lansky. We never got a missing-child report. Was an AMBER Alert even issued?”

      Christine had always been a competent investigator. Whatever her feelings were toward him, she was concerned about the kid. “His dad isn’t going to hurt him. Tyler has been used as a ping-pong ball in a contentious divorce, but there is no indication there’s been any abuse.”

      “Infecting your kid with violent philosophies is psychological abuse. I want to find that boy as bad as you do, but I think you are looking in the wrong place.”

      They weren’t looking in the wrong place. She couldn’t see past her loyalty to the townspeople. “I need some kind of lead. If you could just point me to a person who might know something.”

      “I am not aware of any extremist element around here. Most of the families that were a part of the siege ten years ago left the county in shame. But no one in town has forgotten about that boy being shot. I doubt they would trust an agent enough to tell you anything.”

      That truth hit him like a rock thrown against his chest. He couldn’t go forward in the investigation without her. “You have a relationship with these people. They will talk to you.”

      Christine drew her mouth into a tight line. “I can give you full access to all our arrest records and reports.” She paced across the floor to the coffeepot.

      All her movements had been jerky and nervous since she’d come into the office. Though she maintained a professional demeanor, he knew her well enough to know she was upset about him showing up here. But was her irritation about the way they were running the case or about what they had been to each other ten years ago?

      “Both Deputy Mitchell and I will help you with surveillance, or if you just need directions to someplace, or—” Her voice faltered when she spilled coffee on her hand. She cupped her other hand over it.

      Sympathy surged through him as he bolted across the room. “Did you burn yourself? Let me see.” He reached for her.

      She twisted and pulled her hand out of reach. “It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it.” She looked up at him, eyes like granite. “I’m still only going to deal in hard evidence, and I’m still telling you that I have not seen anything that makes me believe there is any kind of group around that is a threat.” Her voice strained to the point of breaking. She turned her back to him.

      He was beginning to think that he was the worst person to send on this assignment. There was an elephant in the room that was getting in the way of the investigation. All the hurt he had caused her ten years ago was rising up to the surface. The undercurrent of tension in her voice told him he had pushed hard enough. Regret washed through him over the man he used to be … for how he had treated her. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but withdrew. She was a married woman. He didn’t want her to misinterpret the gesture. He softened his tone. “Guess I’ll look at those records.”

      “Good.” She turned back to face him and offered him an artificial smile. “If you like, I can set you up in the next room. I can pull all the reports for the last six months. You can read through them to your heart’s content.”

      Though she was trying hard to sound cordial, the lines in her forehead revealed her anguish.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ