“There was a dog. A puppy. He was asleep in the backseat.”
“We know about the dog.”
Jamison hesitated. “There was something else…I don’t know if it’s relevant, but…”
“Yes,” Wilkes coaxed.
“The woman was overly friendly with me.”
“Overly friendly?”
“Yes, she leaned forward, offered me a big smile, and wished me a merry Christmas.”
Wilkes could picture the scene in his mind. Ashley Davison had made a narrow escape. Not for the first time, she’d managed to outsmart law enforcement, and naturally she was relieved. She hadn’t been flirting—that wasn’t her style—she was simply happy, riding high on her success.
She’d made a mistake, though. A big one. And she assumed she’d gotten off scot-free. She didn’t know it yet, but that was about to change.
“Anything else you can tell us?”
“Yes,” Officer Jamison continued. “Later I got a call near Grants Pass. I believe I saw the car I’d stopped earlier take the first exit. There are a number of gas stations in the area, so I suspect they were looking to fill their tank.”
More good news. “Thank you, Officer. You’ve been a big help.”
“Glad to be of assistance,” he said, and disconnected the line. The state patrolman didn’t know how fortunate he was. If he’d caught on that there was something amiss, Wilkes was fairly certain the woman would have done whatever necessary to keep him from reporting her whereabouts. Instead, Jamison would head home to his family. If luck was with Wilkes, he, too, might be able to join his own family for Christmas this year. All he had to do was apprehend Ashley Davison.
“Start the car,” Wilkes instructed his partner. “We’ve got the lead we’ve been waiting for.” He felt the adrenaline rush. He was familiar enough with the feeling that told him he was close to capturing his prize. It wouldn’t be long now. Not long at all.
—
Wilkes and Buckley hit pay dirt at the third gas station. It was a big truck stop and sold only diesel. He’d almost bypassed it, but he was determined to leave no stone unturned. It was there that he found what he needed to know.
“Yeah.” The young woman behind the counter wore her dirty-blond hair in a ponytail. She looked at the photo again and said, “That’s him, all right. He was here maybe an hour ago. Maybe it was thirty minutes. I lose track of time. He wasn’t looking to fill up his car. Couldn’t have helped him if he was, but he already seemed to know that.”
A trucker stepped up to the counter, and without breaking eye contact with Wilkes, Ponytail handed over the key attached to a large flat board that read SHOWER ROOM.
“He was looking for the name of a good mechanic,” she continued. “I told him about Stan the Man. He’s a bit of an odd duck, but he’s good with cars. He knows his business.”
“Stan the Man. That’s the name of his business?”
“Nope, that’s his name. Never heard him called anything else. Don’t know his last name.”
Wilkes decided to let that pass. “Did the man in the photograph mention what kind of car trouble he was having?”
The young woman shook her head. “No, can’t say that he did. His best chance of getting back on the road in a hurry, though, was with Stan the Man—”
“He was in a hurry?” he asked, interrupting her.
“Yes, big-time. I think he said something about an appointment in Seattle.”
“Today?” His heart started to race. A sense of urgency filled him. Whatever was going down must be taking place soon. Sooner than he’d anticipated. This news didn’t bode well.
“I can’t say when or why he needed to get to Seattle.” She shrugged, and looked like she regretted not being able to help him more.
“Okay, let’s get back to the mechanic you recommended.”
“Stan the Man’s the best we have, probably the best in the entire county. He knows cars better than anyone.”
“Anything else you can tell us?”
“Not that I remember.”
Agent Buckley handed her a card. “If you think of anything, just call this number.”
“I will,” she said, reading the card. She glanced up and smiled. “I’ve never talked to anyone in the FBI before.”
“We need to get back on the road,” Wilkes said, and grabbed the photo off the counter.
“You’ve been a big help,” Agent Buckley told Ponytail.
Wilkes waited until they were back in the black Suburban before he spoke. “Whatever is going down is happening soon.”
“I don’t understand why Sutherland didn’t say something to the clerk. Davison wasn’t around.”
“That we know of,” Wilkes muttered. Agent Buckley wasn’t as familiar with Davison as he was. “The woman could easily have had something on Sutherland that made it impossible for him to talk.”
“If luck is with us, he’ll still be at the repair shop.”
Wilkes hoped that was the case; they’d find out soon enough.
“Should we call for backup?” Agent Buckley asked.
Thinking of the fiasco that had so recently taken place, Wilkes decided to wait. “We’ll do surveillance first and then make that decision.”
They arrived at the address and circled the block. The garage bay doors were open and it was apparent they were too late to apprehend Davison and release her hostage.
As soon as they parked in front of the business, the tall, thin man in overalls walked out to greet them. He wore a big smile.
“I’ve been waiting for you boys for fifteen years,” he said, grinning for all he was worth as he wiped his hands clean on a pink rag.
Wilkes and Buckley exchanged glances.
“All I can say is that it took you long enough. I must have written and emailed you a hundred times and never got a response. What did it this time?”
“You’re Stan.”
“Stan the Man,” he corrected. “Folks around here gave me the name because of my alien wife.”
“What country is she from?”
“Not a country, man. She’s from a different planet.”
“You have a wife from outer space?” Buckley asked incredulously.
Ah hell. Wilkes was afraid this was going to be a waste of precious time. This mechanic was a candidate for a padded cell.
“Yup, she’s from a planet mankind has yet to discover. I hated to leave her pregnant and all. Been waiting all these years to get back to her.”
“We aren’t here about space travel,” Wilkes informed him, doing what he could to get the information he needed. He should have taken note when the dirty-blond told him Stan the Man was a bit of an odd duck. That was putting it mildly.
“You aren’t here about me and my alien wife?” Stan the Man didn’t bother to hide his disappointment.
“We need to know if you’ve seen this man in the last few hours.” Wilkes held up the photograph of Dash Sutherland.
The mechanic studied the photo and slowly a smile slid into place. He looked up and held Wilkes’s gaze for a long moment. “Tell you what. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
“I beg your pardon?”
By this time Stan looked almost gleeful. “You heard me. You need my help and I need yours.”
Wilkes stiffened. “What do you want?”
“It’ll be no skin off your nose, so don’t go all pissy on me. I want to go up in one of those rockets the government is always shooting off down there in Florida. I want to find my woman and lay claim to my child.”
Wilkes had heard a great deal in his years with the FBI, but this was by far the most unusual request of his career.
“I tried all the normal channels to get back to my lover, but my congressman considered me a nutcase and our senator hasn’t bothered to answer a single one of my requests. I’m tired of playing nice. If you boys can’t help me, then I’m done answering your questions. We’re finished here.” He looked expectantly from one to the other.
/>
For one of the first times in his career, Wilkes was speechless.
“I know you have ways of making me talk, but I’m telling you right now that unless you’re willing to play ball, my lips are sealed.”
It was Buckley who took the lead. “We might be able to arrange something.”
Stan’s face widened with a satisfied grin. “I thought you boys would see the light. Oh, and by the way, your car needs an oil change.”
Wilkes glanced over his shoulder to make sure the Suburban wasn’t leaking oil. “How do you know that?”
“He told me,” Stan the Man explained. “For the most part, he’s proud to be part of the support staff for the FBI, but you need to see that he’s properly fed and given what he needs.”
“Do you have dreams?” Ashley asked Dash, curiosity getting the better of her. They were well into Oregon now and she was relaxed and feeling particularly close to Dash. No matter how much he wanted to concentrate on the upcoming interview, he couldn’t ignore the attraction between them. Maybe it was the holiday season or the fact that they’d been in close proximity to each other for the last two days. No matter what brought this about, she wasn’t complaining. The pressure of work and school had vanished and she was more relaxed than she had been in months. Her head and her heart felt wide open.
While it was true they’d just met, they’d spent more time together in the last day and a half than she had with Jackson, a man she’d been dating on again/off again for several months—well, until recently.
“Everyone dreams,” Dash said, glancing her way and smiling. “Personally, I don’t remember mine.”
“Not nighttime dreams,” she chided, and resisted rolling her eyes. He was being deliberately obtuse, which she discovered was something he enjoyed. “Dreams, you know, about your future.”
“Oh, those kind of dreams. Yeah, I suppose,” he said without elaborating. “What about you?”
She sighed and leaned her head against the back of the seat. Little Blade had gotten restless after their lunch stop and she’d brought him into the front seat with her. He was sprawled across her lap and she absently petted him. The puppy was content now and she was growing sleepy.
“My immediate dreams are to finish my graduate degree and find work. I’d like to be close to Mom. It’s been hard on her since my dad died.”
“My mom, too, although she’s had a long time to adjust to widowhood.”
“Is your sister close?”
“A hundred miles away, but they get together often.”
Ashley concentrated on her hands. “I didn’t handle my dad’s death well. Mom, either. I think if we’d had time to prepare, I mean, if he’d been sick for a long time, we might have been able to accept it.” She paused and bit into her lower lip. “But one morning he kissed both mom and me goodbye, went to work, and by noon he was dead.”
“Heart attack?”
She shook her head. “He worked on the docks. There was an accident and Dad was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s been three years and it does get easier with time, but it’s always there. It’s worse for Mom than me. Dad was her soulmate. They were together constantly. Dad had such big plans for their retirement; he wanted to travel to every state in the union and had money set aside to buy a motor home. It was his dream.”
“Life is like that, Ash,” he said, his voice gentle, caring. “I saw more death than I ever cared to while in Afghanistan. I lost friends who had dreams of their own: wives, babies they had yet to hold.”
“Is that why you left the military?”
“Part of the reason. When you ask if I have dreams, I can say that I do. I want to do my part to put an end to evil. I want to live the life my friends didn’t get the chance to live and marry a woman I can love and trust, who will feel the same about me.”
She knew he was thinking about the one who’d hurt him while he was away serving his country and the one who’d broken his heart that led to his enlistment. He’d never mentioned either name, and that was fine. She wanted Dash to concentrate on the future rather than on the past.
“And I want to go fly-fishing,” Dash added.
“Fly-fishing?”
“Yeah, that was something my dad and I used to do. I haven’t been able to in a long time…since shortly before Dad died when I was a teen. I’ve been feeling the urge to get out there and let go of my worries while I fished, just the way my dad did.”
“There’s great fly-fishing in the Pacific Northwest,” she said, assuming he’d get the job. She wanted it for him and for herself, although there was no guarantee she’d find work close to Seattle.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
“My dad loved to fly-fish, too. There was nothing he enjoyed more than standing in the middle of some fast-moving stream in those ridiculous-looking rubber pants with suspenders and swinging his line. Watching him was amazing. I can still remember seeing that line swirl through the air with the same grace as a ballerina.”
A slow smile crept over Dash’s face. “That sounds pretty close to heaven to me.”
Ashley’s mind was filled with childhood memories of her father fishing and his love of the sport.
Dash frowned as he glanced in his rearview mirror. “I don’t believe it,” he said with a groan.
“Believe what?”
“I’m being pulled over again.”
“The state patrol?” Ashley had a hard time believing it herself. Twice in one day had to be some kind of record.
“Not the state patrol. But it looks likes law enforcement to me.”
Ashley glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of a large black Suburban tailing them, red lights flashing. A police car was behind him, and another car as well. It looked like an entire parade of law enforcement vehicles.
Dash slowed and then eased to a stop on the right-hand side of the freeway. The traffic on I-5 whizzed past as he reached over her for the paperwork for the rental car.
Ashley couldn’t imagine what they could have possibly done to attract all this attention. Sure, someone had switched their license plates, but this had to be something else. Now what?
“What in the name of…” Dash’s face hardened as he checked his rearview mirror. “Ashley, listen to me.” His voice was low and hard. “Do whatever they say. Understand?”
“Yes, but…”
Before she could finish, the passenger door was jerked open and a man stood on the other side with a gun pointed directly at her. She gasped and automatically raised her hands.
“Get out of the vehicle with your hands clasped behind your head.” The man with the gun gestured for her to move.
She swallowed a sense of panic. “I…what about the dog?” Little Blade was asleep in her lap.
The plainclothes officer hesitated. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Ashley did as instructed.
“Buckley, get the puppy.”
Another man appeared and grabbed hold of Little Blade.
“There’s a carrier in the backseat,” Ashley told him. “It would be best if you’d put him in that for now.”
Ashley could hear Dash arguing with another law enforcement official. He was already outside the vehicle and standing with his hands behind his head as he answered their questions. From his raised voice, it sounded as if he was about to lose his cool.
Once Ashley was free of the dog, she climbed out of the car with her hands tucked behind her head. “I can explain everything,” she said, doing her best to remain calm despite the fact that her heart was pounding at an alarming rate. Glancing around, she was shocked to see about a dozen different men and women from a variety of official agencies, if their uniforms were anything to go by.
“Homeland Security?” she heard Dash shout. “You people must be crazy.”
“On your knees,” the man with the gun directed her.
Ashley looked down at the ground, which was soggy and slushy. “I’ll get my jeans wet,” she protested. “Co
uldn’t you do whatever it is you have to do with me standing?”
“Handcuff her,” the man with the gun ordered to the one he’d referred to as Buckley.
“Hey, that hurts! Wait a minute,” she said, hardly able to believe what was happening. “You’re going to handcuff me? Whatever for?” This was beyond the point of being ridiculous.
Buckley stepped forward and grabbed hold of her wrist and slapped on the handcuffs.
“I know my rights. I learned the Pledge of Allegiance,” she said. “What about liberty and justice for all? What about my rights as an American?” The men weren’t answering.
“Dash?” she cried out desperately, as they each held an arm and marched her toward the Suburban. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he shouted back, and he seemed to be as bewildered as she was.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, struggling now. “I want an attorney. You’re supposed to let me make a phone call.”
She could hear Dash arguing with the police, and when she looked over her shoulder, she saw it took two men to restrain him.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” he insisted, but no one seemed to be listening.
“Bring him in, too,” the man in charge shouted out.
“What about Little Blade?” she asked. They couldn’t abandon the puppy. The poor dog would need counseling after being left behind once already. “Who’s going to take care of the puppy?”
Buckley got her situated in the backseat of the Suburban, which wasn’t an easy task with her hands locked behind her back. As soon as she was secured, he returned to the rental car.
The man who’d pointed the gun at her spoke: “I bet you thought you’d outsmarted us again.”
Ashley had the feeling no amount of arguing was going to convince this hard-nosed enforcement officer that she was innocent of whatever he thought she had done. With that in mind, she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t stupid. She watched NCIS and a bunch of those cop shows. The more information she offered, the more she was likely to dig herself into a deep, dark hole.
“Not going to talk?”
She pinched her lips together just so he’d know she had no intention of explaining herself. “I want an attorney.”