“I’m sorry, Holly.
“That’s not all, Nathan. They know about you. They know you’re the one who killed their little brother at the compound. They also know who your father is.”
He just stared. How the hell could they know that? His mind raced with possibilities, all of them bad.
“We can protect you, put you in the witness security program.”
“Forget about it. I’m not hiding from those two mutts.”
“But everything’s changed. They know who you are.”
“I’ll be okay. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Outside, she asked if he didn’t mind driving. He tucked her into the passenger seat and walked around the front of the SUV. Moving the driver’s seat all the way back, he climbed in and reached for the keys. They weren’t there.
“Sorry.” She reached into her purse. “There’s a piano bar not far from here. It’s open for another hour.”
“Sounds good. You go there often?”
“When I can’t sleep. How did you know about the garage switch?”
“I didn’t, for sure. It was just a feeling.”
“Turn right at L, then go left at the next signal. Based on what?”
“I’m not sure I can explain it.”
“Will you try?”
“It was a lot of things. Things that had been floating around in my head. Like the claymores at the compound. The trip wire on porch steps of the farmhouse. The buried cash. It’s hard to nail down.”
“There was a trip wire?”
“It was rigged to a bunch of empty beer bottles. I cut the string before you got there.”
“I saw the bottles, but I didn’t think twice about them.”
“Harv and I were trained to look for stuff like that, to be suspicious of things that seem ordinary. I’m just glad the garage door itself wasn’t rigged. That’s why I asked you and Henning to look for a wire when I started lifting it.”
“I’m just really glad you were there. To be honest, I resented your involvement. I didn’t say anything at the airport. I didn’t want to offend you.”
“Larry Gifford told me the same thing at the compound, almost word for word.”
“Larry’s a good man.”
“I like Gifford a lot,” Nathan said. “He’s the real deal.”
“We’re like a family, the FBI. We look out for each other. Sometimes I think we’re dependent on each other to the point of being restrictive, arrogant even. We don’t like asking for outside help.”
“You’re not alone.”
“How can you sound so calm about all this? The Bridgestones know who you are.”
“Like I said, all they have is my name.”
“Turn left at the next signal. You can park anywhere, the bar’s just up the street.”
Nathan pulled over to the curb and climbed out quickly, but before he made it to Holly’s side of the Explorer, she had her door open and was sliding out. He closed it for her.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“My mother’s old school.”
They walked in silence down the sidewalk. A few cars still lingered about, but for the most part, the downtown streets of Sacramento were deserted. Nathan saw the entrance to the bar just ahead. A small black awning overhung its glass door. A red neon sign in the shape of a grand piano lit the window next to the door. The opposite window had two blue neon signs shaped like cocktail glasses. He could hear muffled jazz coming from inside. It sounded good, even through the glass. He looked for black, flattened wads of gum on the sidewalk as a gauge of the bar’s patrons and found none. The glass door was clean. No handprints or smudges.
Holly hesitated, letting him open the door. Once inside, Nathan gave the place a quick scan. So did Holly. She scanned from left to right, while Nathan went right to left. Their surveillance met in the middle, and they smiled, knowing they had both been doing the same thing. A linear bar stood to their left with cocktail tables on the right. A small elevated stage on the far wall hosted the two musicians. Because the room was small and intimate enough for natural sound, the musicians weren’t using a PA system. To Nathan’s surprise, they had the place to themselves. The bartender nodded and they grabbed the first table on the right. Nathan pulled Holly’s chair for her, and she thanked him.
“You don’t mind being this close to the door with your back facing it?” she asked.
“I prefer it.”
She looked puzzled.
“If trouble comes in, I’m already behind it. Besides, you’ve got a small throwaway under your jeans in an ankle holster. Right side.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a throwaway. It’s a Glock thirty-nine.”
“Correction, it’s a small cannon. I’ll bet it fits your hand well. Forty-five GAP, single, double action. Six shots?”
“Seven, including one in the pipe. You know your guns.”
“A hobby. I noticed the bulge.”
“Is that all?”
“I… tell you what. If a bad guy comes in, I’ll duck. You shoot.”
“It’s a deal. You haven’t asked about the Bridgestones’ cousins.”
“From the way you looked in the lobby, I didn’t want to press.”
“I guess I’ve finally reached that burnout you talked about. I was standing in my kitchen and started to cry for no reason.”
“No reason? This isn’t something small. On the drive up to the cabin, I was talking about a dropped dish or a burned steak.” He wished he hadn’t said burned steak. “Sorry, bad choice of words.”
“How could they do that, burn him alive like that?”
“I don’t know, Holly. I honestly don’t.”
The bartender approached them, a short, balding man with a bushy mustache, bow tie, and friendly smile. He placed a bowl of miniature pretzels on the table. “Can I get you folks something to drink?”
“What type of wine do you have by the glass tonight?” Holly asked.
“Tobin James cabernet sauvignon, vintage 2003.”
“Is that a local winery?”
He issued a more-or-less gesture with his hand. “Paso Robles.”
“That’s perfect, thank you.”
“You, sir?”
“O’Doul’s, please.”
“You don’t drink alcohol?” she asked.
“I’ve been recovering for a long time.”
“Good for you. Are you okay with me having some wine?”
“Not a problem.”
Holly lowered her voice a little. “At the farmhouse, we found the entrance to the tunnel in the bedroom closet. They used a piece of plywood covered with dirty clothes to hide it. There was a small chamber with two bunk beds just under the slab. Probably took them weeks to excavate by hand. It looked exactly like the setup at the compound. They used railroad ties for the walls, and water skies with skateboard wheels to travel the tunnel. Like you suspected, the other side came up under the windmill at the property corner. We found marks in the dirt where they crawled across the neighboring property to a canyon that connects to another road.”
“What about Billy and his brother?”
“SWAT found them. They’d been dragged fifty feet into the tunnel. Both had been shot in the back of the head with a twenty-two caliber.”
Nathan pursed his lips and shook his head.
“It isn’t your fault, okay? We can’t even be sure they were there at the same time we were.”
“They were there.”
“You don’t know that for sure. They could’ve shown up anytime yesterday. They could’ve arrived early this morning when Bruce dropped off their cousins. Bruce is lucky to be alive. He could’ve been killed too. In fact, I think it’s fair to assume they weren’t there or he would’ve been killed. We also had the place bugged, we would’ve heard them talking.”
“They probably suspected there were bugs and communicated by written notes. Who knows? I should’ve seen this coming. It was that damned garage. Other things too. Everything was right there and I didn’t see it. I should’ve put it all together.”
“We had no reason to believe Ernie and Leonard would be there. Bruce was right, their cousins were just a couple of hayseeds.”
“Then why were they killed?”
Holly said nothing.
“It’s because they knew something, maybe another safe house or hiding place or a contact. Something important. Was the motorcycle still in the garage?”