“We did trace it, you know. To a big cloud somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Not really, but it might as well have been. Total dead end. I was as surprised as you. Figured it would turn out to be a private company. Then we got the call to knock it off.”

“Call from who?”

“The official source apparently did not wish to identify itself to a lowly one-star. I got the word from higher up the chain of command.”

“So are you in trouble?”

“I don’t think so. But I might be wrong about that.”

“I had a friend at USACIL try to run the plate for me. I got called by a Colonel Walmsey. He tried to shame me into coming back and cleaning the mess up, but then he figured out who my father was and backed off. I wonder if he got warned off too.”

“I don’t know about that. But we sure did. And J2 is not used to having its hand slapped, I can tell you that.”

“Who has the horsepower to do that?”

“It’s not a long list. What the higher-ups want to keep secret, they do keep secret, right or wrong.”

“As a soldier, I get that. As a taxpayer I’m more than a little pissed.”

“So be pissed. It is what it is.”

“The two guys?”

“Anyone’s guess. What did they look like?”

“They looked like me, only smaller.”

“So former military, like you said on our last call.”

“I don’t know for sure, General.”

“General?”

“We’re back on the clock.”

“Okay,” she said in an amused tone.

“Maybe they’re still on our side. In fact, since you got called off maybe they are on our side.”

“Maybe. But it prompts the question of what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, Puller.”

“Blowback from West Virginia?”

“That’s what I was thinking. It touched a lot of very hot wires. It looked like things turned out great and you were the hero, but you know D.C. Things could have changed. Maybe they’re looking for a scapegoat for a reason unknown to either of us. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened.”

“Meaning me as the scapegoat?”

“And I was involved too, if you recall.”

“So why would they be down here tracking me—”

He gripped the phone so hard he thought he felt the shell begin to cave in.

“Puller?”

“I’ll call you back.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll call you back.”

Puller clicked off and hit a hard right.

Because the Chrysler guys kept showing up where he was, he had simply assumed that they had to be after him.

That had been an assumption he had no business making.

While it was true that the guys had taken up a tail on him—they had been seen around the Sierra after all—they had to have picked him up from some point.

And he knew what that point might have been.

My aunt’s house.

They might not have been following him. This might have nothing to do with blowback from what had happened in West Virginia. They might have been checking out Betsy Simon’s home.

And it wasn’t a huge stretch to their having killed her. He didn’t care if they were from the Pentagon or if someone high up was trying to call the dogs off. If they had killed his aunt they were going to pay for it.

He punched the gas and the Tahoe sped off into the darkness.

CHAPTER

45

PULLER PARKED TWO BLOCKS OVER and walked the rest of the way to his aunt’s home.

He did it by a very circuitous route. If people who could call off the Pentagon were involved in this, then Puller had to raise the level of his game accordingly.

He stopped near a fenceline and studied the terrain ahead. It was ten o’clock, dark even on the Emerald Coast, where the sun purportedly never stopped shining. It was quiet on Orion Street. A slight cooling breeze was blowing in from off the water. A car started up somewhere, its ignition shattering the silence.

Puller hunkered down and took cover behind a bush to remove himself from the possibility of headlights reflecting off him. The car drove past. It wasn’t the sedan with the two men inside.

But Puller still recognized it.

It was Jane Ryon driving past in her blue Ford Fiesta, the dent in the side door looming large in the wash of streetlights.

What the hell was she doing here? She had already gotten her things from his aunt’s house.

There was no way he could follow her. The Fiesta was nearly out of sight as it turned the corner. By the time he hustled back to his vehicle and took up the chase she would be long gone.

He slipped out into the open and continued down the sidewalk, his gaze moving like radar. He reached his aunt’s house and opted for entry through the rear door. The lights in Cookie’s house next door were on. Apparently the retired baker was in for the night. Or perhaps he had not yet gone out.

As he was walking through his aunt’s backyard Puller heard a little yap. He trotted to the fence and peered over.

Sadie looked up at him and yapped again.

Puller eyed the dog and then glanced over at Cookie’s house. Then he eyed the dog again.

What had Cookie said to him? He knew the Storrows, the couple found dead on the beach. They were friends. He was stunned by their deaths. Just like he had been stunned by his friend Betsy’s death. There was nothing surprising there. But there was one unanswered question.

Had Betsy Simon known the Storrows?

He looked down at Sadie barking. The little dog seemed sad. And lonely. And, if it was possible, her little features seemed confused.

Cookie said he would usually let Sadie out late in the morning to do her business. Puller had seen multiple leashes hanging on a hook by the back door when he had visited the house previously. And he had seen Cookie walking Sadie.

But Florida had snakes and gators and other types of nocturnal predators. Why let your little dog out alone at night even in a fenced backyard?

Puller jumped the fence and landed near Sadie, who jumped back in surprise and started yapping again. Puller scooped the little dog up in one arm and pulled his M11 with his right hand. Sadie, perhaps sensing that something was amiss, stopped yapping. Her tongue gently licked Puller’s arm.

Puller kept his gaze on the house. He reached the back steps and slipped quietly up them. The door was unlocked. He passed through, checking out all possible ambush angles before venturing farther in.

He cleared one room after another, keeping low and to the side and giving limited opportunity for anyone hiding inside to get a clean shot at him.

His search ended in the upstairs bathroom.

He put Sadie down and the little dog started licking at the water.

Puller put his gun away and stared down at Cookie.

He was naked and in the bathtub.

More precisely, he was resting at the bottom of the tub.

Puller made no move to pull him out and attempt to resuscitate him. It would have been for naught.

The eyes stared up at Puller.

The eyes of a dead man.

Drowning, he was certain, would be the official cause of death.

Just like his aunt next door.

Folks found submerged in water usually died because water was in their lungs, where water should not be.

The question then became, how did the person become submerged?

Three possible scenarios presented themselves.

Cookie could have had some medical crisis, a heart attack, a stroke, a seizure, or a drug reaction that had rendered him unconscious. He then would have slipped under the water and died.

Or he could have hit his head, knocked himself out, and gone under.

Or someone could have held him under the water.

Puller did not think the fourth possibility, suicide, was realistic. The body had its own emergency reaction to attempted suicide by drowning. It fought for air. You could kill yourself out in the ocean by drowning because you gave yourself no opportunity to get back to land.