Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (20 page)

“He’s a bottom feeder,” Avi answered with an eye roll. “Too small to bother with, but too protected not to be a pain in the ass.”

“So we come at him sideways. Make him an offer he can’t refuse,” she finished with a shrug.

“He’s not a member of the Tattaglia family,
neshama
. This isn’t
The Godfather
,” he replied. “Taas is one of the most important weapons manufacturers in the world, and Dichter is very close to all the right people. This requires strategy—finesse.”

“You let me worry about how to get to him,” Rox replied with a slow, confident smile. “Just get me any info you can on Uzi Dichter and where he’s going to be over the next few days.”

*

March—The Next Day

Wyatt Ranch, Texas

S A M A N T H A

Sam held the
20-inch barrel of the rifle up just after she finished cleaning and reassembling the big, handsome Winchester. Her Uncle Grant had lovingly cared for her father’s collection, and it showed. He kept them racked up in a custom sycamore gun cabinet along with other high-end rifles that would’ve made John Wayne salivate. Sam smiled a little as she ran her fingers over the oiled wood. Boys will be boys, no matter the age.

“That there’s a seven-shot, lever-action repeater,” Mack McDevitt said from the doorway of the library. “Used to be one of your daddy’s favorites during hunting season.”

Sam glanced up toward the thick Texan drawl. Mack McDevitt stood in the doorway of her father’s study, his rangy frame still broad and capable, despite his age.

“You used to help Dad pack his own shells too, didn’t you?” Sam replied with an amused grin. “Like you needed all that extra gunpowder with the heavy metal you guys were toting around. What were you two shooting at in Texas? Rhinos?”

“You would pack your own shells too if you ever had a couple-thousand-pound angry bull charge ya, little girl,” Mack teased her as he came forward.

Sam stood and Mack rounded the desk, giving her a gentle hug. “Good thing I’ve got a horse fast enough to get the hell outta the way, old man,” she teased back, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

Mack smelled like some nostalgic permeation of tobacco, spearmint, and clean cotton, a scent she’d recognize anywhere. Sam closed her eyes, recalling a wistful forgotten memory of the first time her father and Mack had taken her to one of his oil fields. She’d been a wisp of girl then, in awe at the sheer size of the mechanical jack pumps, teetering back and forth like giant see-saws, drawing up untold amounts of crude from wells she couldn’t begin to imagine the depths of. Mack had swung her up onto his shoulders as he walked her around, explaining what the massive machines were doing, breaking the process down into parts she found both scary and fascinating. And even now, she felt calm in the sturdy loop of his arms.

Sam leaned back, studying Mack’s lined face, the burnt-coffee color of his eyes. He was getting up there in years, but he was still spry and fit as a fiddle. His leathery skin looked like it’d been permanently sun-cured, and she supposed it was. Because even though Mack McDevitt was a wealthy man many times over, he still made it a point to go out and see to Wyatt holdings weekly. He always liked being in the fields more than he liked being in an office.

“I hear Wyatt Petroleum will have a banner quarter,” she said.

Mack grinned, shrugging lightly as he stepped back. “Well, black gold’s still how we earn our keep, but the renewables you’ve got us developing are going to blow all that out of the water in a few years. Got a couple Chinese officials looking to snap up our solar thermal tech before the Russians can get to it first.”

Sam nodded, pleased. “Well, I could barely see two yards in front of me during my last business trip to Shanghai, so I’d say China’s probably willing to outbid Russia, and more’s the better. We’ll just plow all that profit into the other energy projects we’ve got in R&D.”

Mack nodded, walking toward her father’s open gun case. Rob Wyatt had collected some rare beauties—a beautifully engraved Remington carbine, a Springfield musket that had probably seen the Alamo, and a special Marlin rifle with a buffalo hand-carved into the side.

Mack glanced up at her, a mischievous smile on his face. “You want to see if these bad boys still shoot?”

Sam laughed softly. “I hurt my back, Uncle Mack. Not my eyesight. You sure you want to be embarrassed out on the range?”

“You’re cocky like your daddy,” he told her, eyes twinkling. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about how I’m like him these past few weeks,” she admitted wryly. “Not sure I like it.”

Mack considered her a moment. “I know Rob wasn’t the greatest father to you, especially after your mama died. But he loved you, you know. You and Ry were the best parts of his life, even if he didn’t tell you so.”

“I know it.” Sam swallowed the lump of emotion that always seemed to come up when she thought about her father, focusing instead on tidying the cleaning supplies she’d laid out on the desk as she waited for Mack to arrive at the ranch. “Thank you for coming out to see me.”

“Anytime. So what’s on your mind, Sammy?” Mack asked, settling down in a leather seat in front of her.

“I need to ask you something,” she admitted frankly. “Something I haven’t wanted to talk about since it happened.”

Mack’s heavy brow furrowed. “Alright, go on.”

Sam took a deep breath.
Now or never.

“I need you to tell me everything you remember about the night dad and Ry died.”

Mack blinked in surprise, like those were the last words he’d expected to hear from her mouth, and they probably were.

“Why?” he asked, his gaze direct and concerned. “Why the hell do you want to relive the worst night of your life?”

Sam couldn’t tell him the whole truth, so she told a half-truth with just enough sting to show him she meant it.

“It’s become painfully clear to me that I haven’t gotten over what happened. I never healed, never let it go,” she glanced out the windows, looking at the garden outside the portico. “It occurs to me—trapped as I am within my corporeal limits—that I can either be haunted by their deaths for the rest of my life, or I can try to find a way to let it go.”

Mack nodded, rubbing gnarled, age-worn fingers over his lips as he thought over her request. “That kind of hurt, Sammy—it never really heals, but you’re right to want to move on from it. Your daddy and Ry wouldn’t want you lamenting. Not after all this time.” He stood, crossing to the stately oak bar built into the wall. “I need a drink if we’re doing this,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “You want one?”

She nodded. “Bourbon, please.”

Mack poured them both a couple fingers into heavy crystal tumblers, handing her a glass before taking a healthy sip of his. He stayed at the large French doors overlooking the seemingly endless acreage of the Wyatt land, looking out at the sun-drenched plains, already hotter than Hades in the midday sun.

“I got the call from Grant first,” he began. “Local sheriff’s department recognized the Wyatt logo on the side of your daddy’s SUV even though most of the car was charred by the time they found it. The town’s not too far from here—maybe just a little over an hour away.”

Sam vaguely recalled it. “You flew me and my friend Rita Ramos in the chopper there.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Grant got there before us. He was the one to identify the remains. I’ve known him for years. We came up together—Grant, your daddy, and me. But that was the only time I ever saw Grant Nelson weep.” Mack took another sip of bourbon, his hand trembling.

She blinked hard, forcing herself not to tear up. Her memories from that time were a painful blur, tamped down by her own survival instinct and her unwillingness to recall the details too clearly. She’d been in so much shock she hadn’t wept until she saw the caskets being lowered into the ground. At that moment, the reality of their deaths ripped away the numb denial she’d been operating in for days. She’d lost it then. Wept like a Sabine Woman for being robbed of her family—her future, her love.

“Tell me about the man who did it,” Sam asked past the lump in her throat, forcing her mind back to the present.

Mack looked at her, his brow furrowed, but he nodded. “He was the town drunk. Some roughneck down on hard times. Guy named Earl Childress. He’d worked the fields back during the oil boom, but when the wells dried up, guess he started hitting the bottle.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Yeah, during his arraignment,” Mack nodded. “Then again at his execution.”

Sam closed her eyes. Childress had been killed by lethal injection just a couple years later—fast-tracked by her family’s attorneys and his own guilty conscience. Childress never admitted outright to doing it—just said he was too drunk to recall anything, but he’d had DUIs before. Even he recognized the pattern of behavior and said as much when he was sentenced. He didn’t fight it. Never tried to appeal anything. Sam had gotten the notice of his death when she was in Kandahar. News of his death had felt so distant and unsatisfying, even then. She recalled holding the email, wishing she could make him suffer as she had, wishing it had been different.

Maybe this was why she’d never felt attached to the proceedings or the end result. Maybe because she’d known somehow that there was more to it than a drunken hit-and-run.

“Uncle Grant said he didn’t go to the execution,” she said aloud.

Mack turned to look at her. “I was the only one. I wanted to see that bastard burn in hell for what he did. You ask me, what he got wasn’t enough.”

“Is there—” she took a quick breath. “Is there a chance Childress didn’t do it?”

Mack frowned at her, his mouth compressed into a thin line. “What the hell are you talking about, Sammy?”

She took a small sip of her bourbon, thinking about the file she’d read a hundred times by now. “I need you to tell me about Dad’s enemies, Mack. Was there anyone who would have wanted him dead?”

Mack released a gruff, incredulous laugh. “Rob Wyatt had a list of detractors about as long as my arm, but murder? That’s a slippery slope and a long shot, darlin’.”

“Is there any possibility that there was any foul play?” she asked again, insistent.

“Sammy, what the heck is going on?” he asked, his face a mixture of bewilderment and consternation.

She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Dad was a powerful man, but he was also an asshole—ruthless. You and I both know he’d do whatever it took to get his way. I guess what I’m trying to reconcile here is whether he and Ryland died in some truly senseless accident or if there was any chance that Earl was just some poor patsy who took the fall for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Mack shook his head. “I looked into Earl. He died penniless. I made sure of it. He would have had nothing to gain by taking a fall.”

“But you’re not entirely certain Dad wasn’t the victim of something bigger, are you?” she continued, sensing some hidden doubt in him, even as he frowned at her.

“Sammy, honey, are you trying to heal or are you digging up snakes?” he asked her, point blank.

She shrugged a little. “Bit of both, I wager.”

Mack knocked back the rest of his bourbon. “You want me to look into the people I think are most likely to have wanted Rob dead, don’t you?”

“I do.” Sam stood slowly. “You’re the only one who knew him well enough to know all the players. I need to know what really happened that night. If you can tell me with one-hundred-percent certainty that no one wanted my father dead, then that’ll go a long way toward helping me heal, Mack. I wouldn’t ask you to do this otherwise.”

Mack looked at her in that direct way of his. “None of this will bring them back, darlin’.”

She nodded, leaning on the desk. “But it will put them to rest in my mind, and sometimes that’s all the satisfaction we get.”

*

March—Mid-Afternoon

Dr. Carmichael’s Office, The Loop, Chicago

J A C K

“You look tense,
Jack. How are you feeling today?”

Jack’s mouth twisted as he looked out of Dr. Carmichael’s window down at the “L” cutting a swatch through downtown Chicago. In the glare of the morning sun, the elevated tracks gleamed like a steely exoskeleton.