Wild Ways

“Hey! Back off!” Carlson pushed his way between them again. “One more word outta you, buddy, and—”

“You want to take this outside, pal?” Blackhorse loomed toward Carlson, his eyes hot with anger.

“Enough!” Meg’s shout cracked through the room like a pistol shot and everyone stared at her, startled into momentary silence. She ran both hands through her tangled hair, tempted to start pulling it out by the roots. “You guys sound just like my brothers! I’ve spent most of my life listening to them argue over who has the right to tell me what to do, and I stopped taking it from them and I’m sure not going to stand here and take it from you!” The last word was all but a shout and she caught herself and took a deep breath to calm down. “All of you back off, understand? Just…back off!”

“Hey, Meg,” Carlson said, clearly hurt. “I never meant anything by it. I was just—”

“Trying to take care of me, I know,” she said with forced patience. “Matt, what are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

“We were in the air fifteen minutes after your call came in this afternoon,” Engler said, eyeing Blackhorse suspiciously. “We choppered in and met with Sheriff Haney—who is not a happy man, by the way. I strongly recommend you don’t go back there anytime soon.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Meg muttered. “Although it wasn’t me who shot up the bar.” This with a hostile look at Blackhorse.

“Anyway, we tracked you here.”

Meg’s heart sank. She’d been quite proud of the way she’d covered her tracks, but apparently she’d left a trail a mile wide. “How?” she asked wearily. “Where did I go wrong?”

Engler just looked at her. “The phone call, of course.”

“What phone call?” Meg wheeled around and looked at Reggie, who was trying to make himself invisible. “Reggie, what phone call?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Well, um…when you went out to the car, I…um…found your cell phone, and…um…”

“He called your brother in Chicago, wanting to talk to Honey. Grady called the Agency, saying something didn’t sound right and wanting to know what we were doing about it.”

Meg winced.

Engler looked across at her. “Meg, what did you think you were doing, coming after Dawes yourself? O’Dell’s fit to be tied.”

She winced again. “He, uh…knows by now. I guess.”

Carlson laughed. “Oh, yeah, he knows. He doesn’t believe it, but he knows.” He laughed again. “I’ve seen O’Dell mad before, but I’ve never seen him like this. You have gone down in the annals of Agency history, Meg. I wouldn’t give two cents for your future, but they’ll be talking about you for decades. You’ve elevated the lowly computer gnome to new heights. Trouble is, now every gnome in the place will want to play field agent and the rest of us will be out of work.”

Meg flushed slightly. “Look, I…uh…”

“Gnome?” Blackhorse had been listening to all this intently, and he looked at her now, eyes narrowed. “You’re a gnome?”

“I am a Computer Information Retrieval Specialist,” she said a trifle defensively.

Blackhorse just stared at her, seemingly unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

“She’s one of the best,” Carlson said blithely. “Although after O’Dell’s finished with you, Meg, you’ll be lucky to have a job counting paper clips. Everyone thought you were on vacation, then we get this phone call from some hicksville sheriff in South Dakota—”

“North,” Engler put in. “North Dakota.”

“Whatever. This sheriff says he has someone in custody who claims to be one of our agents. That said agent was involved in a shootout in a bar involving a Nevada cop—” this with a distasteful glance at Blackhorse “—a thug called Pags Pagliano and a pipsqueak calling himself Reggie Dawes.” This elicited a huff of indignation from Reggie, but Carlson ignored it. “I happened to be closest to O’Dell’s office when the call was routed through to him.” He winced at the memory. “As I said, Engler and I were on a chopper fifteen minutes later and another team was dispatched to your brother’s place to pick up Honey.”

“Is she okay?” Reggie hovered in the background worriedly.

“She’s fine,” Meg snapped. “I told you, my brother’s a cop.”

“She’s fine,” Carlson echoed. He looked at Meg with a shake of his head. “O’Dell’s mighty peeved about that, too, Meg. You know how he hates it when we get civilians involved. You should have sent Honey to an Agency safe house instead of involving your own family.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Not to mention the fact you didn’t have the authority,” Engler said calmly. “Seeing as you’re out here playing field agent games you haven’t been trained for, on an assignment that doesn’t exist.”

Meg flushed again. “The only way Reggie would come with me was if I could guarantee Honey’s safety. I knew sending her to stay with Grady was as good as putting her in any safe house. Maybe better.”

“Wait a minute.” Blackhorse held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Run that by me again? She’s out here on an assignment that doesn’t exist?”

Carlson gave him a dark look. “What police force did you say you were with? Nevada? Kind of out of your jurisdiction, wouldn’t you say?”

Blackhorse ignored him. “You’re saying you clowns let a gnome with no field training come out here and—”

“I took the training!”

“—handle this non-assignment all on her own, without adequate backup or—”

“She didn’t tell anybody what she was doing,” Carlson protested. “She was on vacation! It wasn’t until—” He caught himself abruptly. “Hey, don’t I know you? I know you from somewhere.”

Meg had her mouth open to tell Carlson exactly who Blackhorse was, then subsided, recalling the expression on Rafe’s face when he’d spoken about the Agency. Rafe gave her a quick look, seemingly surprised by her silence.

“Special Agent Rafe Blackhorse,” Engler said suddenly. He stared at Rafe in blank disbelief. “You’re dead!”

“You’re kidding!” Carlson took another look at Rafe, staring hard at him. “Well, I’ll be…it is you! But Engler’s right. You’re dead.”

“Do I look dead?” Rafe asked sourly.

Carlson flushed. “I was in the West Coast office when all that went down. I just heard that you—” He bit it off.

“Ate your gun,” Engler put in helpfully. “Guess the story wasn’t true, then, huh?”

“Guess not, Einstein.”

It gave Meg such a jolt that she simply stared at Rafe, trying to remember everything she’d heard about him. Suicide? Surely she would have remembered that. “I heard…” She frowned, struggling to haul the memory up from the depths of her mind. “I heard it was in the line of duty.”

“They always say that,” Carlson said. “O’Dell doesn’t like it when his agents off themselves. Figures it reflects badly on him. So unless you commit hari kari in front of the Lincoln Memorial at high noon with press and television, it’s kept pretty quiet.”

“You’ve been alive all this time,” Engler said quietly, as though not quite believing it. “Why all the secrecy?”

“It was a cover story of some sort, wasn’t it?” Carlson put in with sudden understanding. “And you’ve been working for O’Dell all this time. So that’s why you turned up here, helping Meg.” He grinned with relief.

Engler was still staring at Rafe. “That true? You still on the payroll?”

“Wish I’d known that beforehand, because I don’t mind telling you, I was a little scared of what we were going to find.” Carlson scrubbed his fingers through his short, brown hair. “Ruffio and Stepino have both got their soldiers out looking for Dawes. I was sure you were dead.”

“You’re hell bent on seeing someone dead, aren’t you?” Rafe muttered. “And I’m not working undercover. Agent Kavanagh and I just sort of ran into each other, is all. I quit the Agency cold two years ago.”