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“And where did you hear this talk?”
“I was outside at the bar one night, snortin’ a little somethin’—somethin’,” he said nervously.
“I don’t care what you were doing,” Brogan stated softly. “What did you hear?”
“Some dude was takin’ a call.” Do
Sandi was still crying, though not as hard.
“What’s Brogan Campbell searching for?” he asked as though he didn’t know.
Desperation filled Do
“What have you heard, then?” Brogan asked.
Do
“Come on, Do
Do
Bingo. So that’s why Doogan wants Eve.
“Anything else, Do
“I swear that’s all.” He whimpered. “I swear that’s all. I swear.”
Brogan lifted the knife from Do
Do
“You hear anything else, Do
Do
Hell, Brogan expected both of them to be gone within hours.
“One more thing, Do
“No one will know you were here,” he promised, then gave a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Trust me; I don’t want anyone to know.”
Brogan strode quickly from the room, Eli and Jed following close behind as they left the house and disappeared into the trees.
The four-wheelers they’d used to get into the mountains were still waiting where they’d left them. Brogan mounted the rugged machine as Eli and Jed did the same, and they started the engines and headed for the enclosed trailer several miles down the mountain and the pickup it was attached to.
The night—or morning, he should say—had yielded far more information than he had ever expected.
Pulling the four-wheeler into the covered trailer as Eli and Jed pulled in behind him, Brogan knew he finally had a direction to move in. Something other than just a list of files currently under review by the military for destruction. Brogan hadn’t seen a location for anything when he’d gone through the files, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It meant he was going to have to go over them much more closely. According to the information Do
Otherwise, there would be no keeping Eve out of this.
His director thought they had one asset no one else could touch.
That asset was Eve.
Because whoever cared enough for Eve that they would only come out if Eve needed them or would only trust whoever she was with, evidently had the ability to not just decode the encryption, but also had information on a militia that Homeland Security believed had been disbanded more than five years before.
He’d been trying to find someone Eve was close to in his search for this informant. Maybe the way to go about this was to see whom Eve and her father, Chandler Mackay, now had in common.
That was where the answers lay.
To get those answers he would have to make Eve break a promise and betray the brother she loved.
He would be risking his soul, but he knew the plans the Freedom League had when it had been disbanded. They had been only months away from assassinating the president and ensuring the vice president, who had been a part of the militia, took his place. From there, they would have ensured the government officials they’d been amassing information on, would fall in with their plans. If they succeeded, the world as he knew it would be over forever. The Freedom League’s ultimate plan was the destruction of free enterprise, freedom of speech, and race equality. The nation would have been broken apart from the inside out, and before the American citizens even realized the danger they were in, it would have been too late.
According to Do
And that, he couldn’t accept.
EIGHT
Eve often helped not just at the bar, but also at Janey Mackay Jansen’s restaurant, Mackay’s Fine Dining. She helped Natches at the garage and in the office, and sometimes at Dawg’s lumber and building supplies store, or, if needed, on the farm he had bought.
When she wasn’t working for various cousins or their friends, then she worked for her mother.
Fortunately, John and Sierra had hired two experienced waitresses within a few nights of her confrontation with Sandi Mikels. Unfortunately, that left Eve at loose ends for a few days—until her sisters learned she was currently jobless.
They saw that as extra time off from the i
Eight hours she didn’t mind. Twelve hours she had a bit more of a problem with.
On the third day she found herself on cleaning duty after Zoey disappeared to “paint” again. Piper and Lyrica had made plans, leaving her mother without the extra help at the same time that di
There were eight guest suites, four to each wing at the side of the converted two-story farmhouse. The suites weren’t overly large, though Eve’s was smaller than the others. Each suite consisted of a bedroom, bathroom, and small sitting room with a reasonable-size flat screened television.
That morning after the guests left, she went through each room that had the service tag hanging on the outside of the door to clean or just refresh the rooms. On the back of each tag the guest had written what services were required. Changing the bed, extra towels, or a variety of other services listed to check off on the back of the card.