Ethan nodded but did not elaborate. Olivia went on.
‘The dogs were both out of their kennels and they was growling out at the woods. I couldn’t see much but the dogs started howling like I’ve never heard ’em do before or since. I don’t mind tellin’ you that I panicked and set them loose on whatever was agitatin’ them.’
Lopez, her own eyes cast out into the lonely woods, spoke softly. ‘What happened?’
Olivia gestured to the forest.
‘They ran no more’n twenty paces toward the treeline and then both of ’em came up short like they’d hit a brick wall. They came runnin’ right back past me, into the house and neither of ’em came back out for more than a month.’
Ethan looked at her. ‘You think they saw something?’
Olivia nodded slowly. ‘It wasn’t just that, it was the smell.’
‘The smell?’ Lopez echoed.
‘Like nothing you’ve ever smelled before,’ Olivia said, her nose crinkling up at the memory of it. ‘Imagine fifty people hiking through a rainforest together for six months, not taking a shower or washing their clothes or cleanin’ up after themselves, and then being packed into a small room with you for a week.’ She shook her head. ‘I nearly threw my guts up. We’re standing here a hundred yards from the treeline, and whatever it was that smelled so bad was somewhere beyond that and it still nearly made me hurl, y’know what I’m sayin’?’
Ethan scanned the treeline and reassessed the property. Clapperboard walls, single-glazed windows, no land line. Vulnerable and exposed.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked her finally.
Olivia nodded.
‘Only briefly,’ she replied, her voice now a whisper. ‘I couldn’t move, the smell was so bad and the feeling of being watched just had me rooted to the spot. I must have been here for twenty minutes or more, and then it moved just across there in the trees.’
Olivia pointed to a dense clump of pines jutting out toward the homestead, and an animal trail that ran alongside it and into the forest.
‘What did it look like?’ Lopez asked, unable to contain her curiosity.
Olivia looked like she was going to throw up all over again, her face pale now.
‘Big,’ she uttered. ‘Biggest damned thing I ever saw, and hunched over a bit like a gorilla or something. But it was lookin’ at me. Jesus, makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. It must have been watching me for a long time because the rest of the wildlife had taken off a few days before I saw it.’
‘Is that when Cletus started taking pictures for Randy?’
Olivia recovered herself, and nodded.
‘I told him about it, and he said he’d seen things when he’d been out and about in the woods but never told me on account of me thinking he’d lost his mind. We neither of us spoke of it to anybody else but Randy.’
Ethan took a breath, and took a chance.
‘Did Cletus keep a record of what he and Randy learned about this creature?’
Olivia MacCarthy stared out into the forest for a moment more and then turned to Ethan. She reached up the collar of her shirt and undid two buttons before delving in and retrieving a slim black flash drive that was tied to a thread. She snapped the thread before handing the drive to Ethan.
‘Randy used to say that Cleet should save a copy of everythin’ they found, because someday people might threaten them. I told them both they were fools to think anything they might find out here would make them that important.’
‘And did they?’ Lopez asked. ‘Find anything important?’
Olivia nodded.
‘Whatever’s on that drive is what Randy and Cleet were doing, and whatever they found is there. Cleet kept it buried in a plastic box out in the yard, but since what happened. . I’ve kept it on my person, just in case.’
Ethan looked at the drive in his hand, and glanced at Lopez.
‘Didn’t Sally MacCarthy say that she was sure her house had been searched by someone, after she found Randy’s body?’
Lopez nodded.
‘Maybe this is why. Maybe there really is something on that drive that incriminates somebody enough to lead them to kill, and maybe Randy’s claims of government agents working out here weren’t so wild after all.’
‘Whoever they are,’ Olivia MacCarthy rumbled, ‘find them and make them pay. Don’t let my Cletus have had his life ended for nothing.’
17
‘I’ve got something.’
Natalie saw Ben hurrying toward her, a sheaf of papers in his hand. Guy Rikard looked up at him and smirked as he passed.
‘Is it catching?’
Ben ignored him; he grabbed a chair, hauled it across to Natalie’s desk and sat down beside her.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
She saw Ben’s features creased with concern. He was too cool to let Rikard notice it, but now as they huddled at her desk he let some of his tension spill out.
‘I did a bit of extra digging on Joanna Defoe, okay? Disappeared Gaza City four years ago.’ Ben laid down the papers he held on her desk and spread them out before her. ‘I found her in the database right away, no problems. Seems like there was a bit of a diplomatic spat between the administration of the time and the Israeli government, who claimed they had no responsibility for foreign journalists working in Gaza.’
Natalie nodded, recalling all too well those dark days. Ethan should, to all intents and purposes, be something of a non-event in the immense databases of the intelligence community. A former Marine Corps officer, he had served with some distinction in both Iraq and Afghanistan before resigning his commission to pursue a civilian career. Her brother had rarely come home, racing into war zones with the marines and then afterward living and working with Joanna in a succession of volatile countries where violence, abduction and corruption seemed less of a problem and more of a way of life. Columbia, Peru, Gaza, Israel, Somalia and others, each more dangerous and obscure than the last.
Their mother had repeatedly warned Ethan that, sooner or later, his luck would run out.
But it wasn’t his luck that had failed him. It was Joanna’s.
‘Israel kept out of it,’ Natalie said. ‘Ethan started a campaign to try to force Israel to commit resources to locate her and negotiate her release, but nothing came of it. Joanna was just another journalist who had disappeared and after a brief flurry of media interest she was forgotten.’
‘Figures,’ Ben said, ‘the information on her file stops just a few weeks after her disappearance. But that’s what bothered me the most.’
‘How come?’
Ben shifted one of the pieces of paper toward her. ‘Because not only did the department shut down the file on Joanna, which is odd as she was not yet presumed dead, but they opened an entirely new one.’
Natalie looked down at the sheet of paper and her heart skipped a beat.
ETHAN WARNER
US Marines, 15th Expeditionary (Ret.)
Surveillance active and deployed.
‘Ethan,’ she whispered.
Ben’s voice reached her ears as though from the opposite side of the world.
‘Your brother has been under surveillance by at least one intelligence agency ever since he was thrown out of Israel several years ago. Ethan spent a year in Israel trying to find Joanna Defoe and harassing the Knesset to assist him in finding out what happened to her. Israel finally had him expelled from the country when he ran out of cash and threatened legal action against the government.’
Natalie leaned back in her chair and stared out of the office window as she considered the implications of what she had just heard. The intelligence community was keeping at the least a watching brief and quite possibly 24/7 surveillance on Ethan. Such endeavours required a significant amount of manpower, equipment and money. In a day and age when there were so many threats to United States security, to devote time and money to watching a former officer and patriot in such a way was highly unusual. Natalie had no doubt that her brother did not harbour any secret desire to blow up Congress or sink a Navy frigate, and was in fact absolutely certain that he was immensely proud to be an American.