“A feeling.” Durrie stared at him. “You’re telling me you did it based on a random feeling?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jake was trying to be cooperative. Ultimately what they talked about was unimportant. If it helped increase Durrie’s trust in him, that’s all that mattered. But he could tell his captor wasn’t satisfied. “Well… um, the two other men — they kind of stood out.”
“How do you mean?” Durrie asked quickly.
Jake thought back. How did he mean it? “They were…trying…too hard to blend in, I think. I just got the sense that they didn’t really belong.”
“You could tell they were trying?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jake blurted out, then regretted it immediately.
“Being held against your will?”
The words surprised Jake. “Yeah. I guess that would be it, wouldn’t it?”
“I know you still won’t believe this, but this was the only way to keep you alive.”
It wasn’t the first time Durrie had said this, and as much as Jake wanted to push for more, he knew it would be better to wait.
When neither of them said anything for a moment, Durrie asked, “Is that how you spotted me?”
“No. You, I wouldn’t have picked out on my own. It was the other guy, the light-haired one who gave you away.”
“How?”
“He was in the elevator coming down from his floor. It stopped on number three, and you got on. The other man gave you a look that made me think he knew you. But you didn’t respond. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were involved or not until the parking lot.”
Durrie looked away, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then, without another word, he got up and left the room.
That was survival mode kicking in. Any identified threat needed to be dealt with immediately and permanently. It took everything he had to keep from running upstairs, grabbing his gun, and returning to put a bullet in Jake Oliver’s head.
What Oliver had proven once more was that he was gifted. Granted, he lacked training, but his raw skills were impressive. Given the right guidance, who knew what the kid might achieve?
That, of course, was dependent on a couple of factors. Would the kid be open to it?
The survival part of him was pushing for the kid to be turned over to Peter if Durrie wasn’t going to finish the job himself. While the rest was saying, “Isn’t this why you brought him here in the first place?”
Jake was visited twice more by Durrie before he fell asleep again, but never to talk, only to bring in meals. It wasn’t that Jake didn’t try to engage him, but no matter what he said, Durrie never replied.
When he awoke the next morning — or what he assumed was the next morning — Durrie was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, staring at the bed. Behind him, the door was open.
Jake sat up quickly, startled.
“Tell me about the marks in the sand,” Durrie said.
“What?”
“The marks in the sand, outside the barn. Describe them.”
Jake took a second to realize what he was talking about, then thought back to the night of the fire. “Which ones? By the tank, or in between the tank and the building?”
“Start with the tank.”
“Okay. The dirt was disturbed.”
“All the dirt was loose in that area. How could you tell it was disturbed?”
“The patterns. There was a portion of the dirt that looked like it was moving in the same direction, but askew to the pattern of the dirt around it. I guess it looked like it had been pushed there.”
Durrie nodded for a moment. “I was in a hurry. If I’d taken more time, you would have never seen it.”
Jake stared at him. This was the first direct confirmation that his theory of the men being involved with the Goodman Ranch Road murder was correct. “You
“Don’t get all excited,” Durrie said. “I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”
“But one of your friends did.”
“They aren’t my friends.”
“One of the men you were with, then.”
“Tell me about what you found between the tank and the building.”
Jake said nothing for a moment, then, “All right. It was less than an inch long, a kind of rounded cradle in the sand that might have been created by a rope or a thick wire.”
“A cable,” Durrie said.
Jake looked at him, his brow creased. “For what?”
“Video monitoring.”
“Of…what was going on in the barn?”
“How did you find it?” Durrie asked, ignoring the question.
“I…uh, found traces of more disturbed dirt, followed it, and found the mark. I guess it was a spot you missed.”
“I guess it was. That’s what happens when you work with fools and are forced into a hurry-up situation that should have never occurred.”
As much as Jake liked getting answers to questions he’d had for nearly a month, he wasn’t sure Durrie’s openness was a good thing or not. But he couldn’t help himself and asked, “When you say work, you mean murder, don’t you?”
For a moment, it didn’t look like Durrie was going to respond, then he said, “We call it termination.”
“Termination? Like a hit?” Jake asked. That would actually make sense, he realized. If this really had been drug-related, a hit was exactly what it must have been.
Then, as if reading his mind, Durrie said, “This isn’t
“Then who do you work for?”
Durrie stood, picked up his chair, and started for the door. “Depends on the week.”
“The night on Goodman Ranch Road?”
Durrie stopped in the threshold. “Uncle Sam.”
He stepped out and shut the door.
Jake immediately dismissed the answer as just something to confuse him.
But it didn’t really matter what Durrie said now. The man had admitted to being involved in the murder. If Jake could get free, he would report what he’d found out. He didn’t think it would be enough to get him back on the force, but it would prove to the assholes who had kicked him out that he’d been right.
There were three more sessions that day. This time Durrie questioned Oliver about the back-trail search he’d done on Timmons and Larson, what he’d found at the coffee shop, and what had happened when he’d presented the information to his superiors.
The kid was playing it really smart. Cooperating completely, while Durrie knew on the inside he was trying to come up with a plan for escape. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be worth the time Durrie was putting in.
When the idea had first come to him several weeks before — that Oliver might be a useful asset in the future
