“Is there a chance it was a suicide?”
“I honestly don’t know. Possibly. Again, details are murky. But you see the challenge. Until we find out what happened, it would be premature to release any information that could be harmful to the success of the operation.”
He sounded like a bureaucrat. Of course, as the director of a government agency and an army officer, he was a bureaucrat. But she still hated when he sounded like one. As an FBI agent for over a decade, she was officially a government official, too, but O’Dell usually found herself bucking the system. In her own defense, she did what she believed was the right thing. Unfortunately, others in the bureau didn’t necessarily agree with her on what was right, especially if it wasn’t politically correct. Unlike Ben, she didn’t always play by the rules. And consequently, she had a reputation for going rogue. Which made her wonder why in the world he’d want her to go down and check on this.
“Everything has been happening pretty quickly. Peter Logan, a deputy director of DARPA, is trying to find out what happened to the facility, but the FBI will be in charge of the murder investigation. Because of the sensitivity of that facility’s research, Colonel Abraham Hess asked if I could recommend someone we could trust to be discreet, and of course I thought about you.”
Ah, so there was her answer. It was her expertise he needed as much as her discretion.
He paused and she wondered if he was waiting for her to feel grateful or flattered. It was O’Dell’s experience that when government agencies needed to keep secrets, it usually amounted to covering their own asses. But Ben had helped her several times, actually saved her life once. He didn’t ask for favors. This had to be something terribly important to him.
“Of course, I’ll do whatever I can.”
He surprised her when he said, “You don’t have to do this just because it’s me asking, Maggie. You can say no.”
And this time his tone was gentle and filled with concern—the Ben she knew and respected and maybe even loved.
“I’ll leave in the morning after I check in with Gwen.”
“It should only take a few days,” he told her. “Logan already has some people down there. His assistant, Isabel Klein, is there, and he hired a K9 unit. The dog handler is someone Logan knew in Afghanistan. I believe he said his name is Ryder Creed.”
She had worked with Creed twice before. The last time only about a month ago. And suddenly O’Dell was glad they were on the phone so Ben couldn’t see her reaction. Because she could feel herself respond involuntarily.
How was it possible that just the mention of Ryder Creed’s name could send an annoying but pleasant rush through her body?
DAY 2
20.
Haywood County, North Carolina
Dust blurred Creed’s vision. He could taste it, clots of it stuck in his throat, trying to suffocate him. Somewhere on the other side of the mud wall he could hear Peter Logan telling his men to stand down until the dogman cleared the way. But when Logan appeared from around the corner, none of his men accompanied him. Instead, he was walking with a small boy.
Creed recognized the kid. His name was Jabar, but the men in the platoon called him Jabber because for an Afghan kid he talked a lot and fast, no matter which language he used. From what Creed had observed, Jabar spoke at least three, including English.
He guessed the boy was nine or ten going on twenty. The men thought it was funny that Jabar acted so grown-up, even bumming cigarettes off the men and smoking alongside them. The first time Creed met him, Jabar took one look at Rufus and backed away. It wasn’t as if he was frightened but that he thought the dog was bad luck. He warned Creed that the other children in his village would throw rocks at dogs and if Creed didn’t want the animal to be hurt he should not take him beyond the camp.
Jabar came and went as he pleased. The men barely noticed him, and if they did, they teased him. But even after a few weeks Jabar still kept his distance from Rufus. Creed had put it off as superstition, until that last day, when he discovered the real reason.