“I saw you come in,” Ned said. “You were moving like a sixty-year-old. What condition were you taking about just now—on the phone—with that guy, Charles? You said you were taking it easy. Why should you be taking it easy?”
Dane seated his ball cap down low on his head. He looked less like a phantom now and more like the man Ned used to call his friend. “Why don’t we worry about you right now, Ned, and not me,” Dane said, avoiding the question. “I’ll see you back at the station.” He started back toward Sheriff Ellis and his deputy without saying anything else that would conjure up any more memories either of them would rather not deal with at the moment. He didn’t say goodbye. It felt like the worst thing to do. The last time he said goodbye to Ned Lemon, he didn’t see him again until just now. Dane’s phone buzzed again, and he pulled it from his pocket. It was Charles again. He was about to answer when Ned called out.
“Hey, Dane.”
“Yeah?” Dane sent the call to voicemail.
“Maybe I did kill him.”
“Kill who, Ned? Tom?”
“Yeah. I didn’t pull the trigger like that high-school kid over there thinks I did, but I’m sure I’m the reason he’s dead all the same—you know that, don’t you?”
Dane’s phone started buzzing again almost immediately. “How do you mean, Ned?”
“I mean people die around me, Dane. Everybody knows that. That’s who I am.”
Dane just stared at his friend and had absolutely nothing to say that would bring him any solace. He knew exactly how that felt. Maybe he even agreed.
He kept walking, tapped ACCEPT on his phone, and held it to his ear. “Damn, Charles, I said I’d call you back.”
“Number one, don’t you ‘Damn, Charles’ me. I’m your boss. Number two, don’t you ever hang up on me again if you like having me as a boss, and number three, tell your man Ellis over there that you’re done playing hayseed cop. You’re being called up.”
“Called up? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’ve just been requested by name to fly to Jacksonville, Florida, by the big dogs. That’s what I was calling you about in the first place before you hung up on me.”
“What? Why?”
“You’ll be briefed on the ride down here. You need to get to McFalls Memorial ASAP.”
“Seriously, Charles, why?”
“Because it’s the closest helipad to where you’re at and I need you to meet the team they put together at the chopper.”
“The team who put together?”
“Damn, Dane, you are slow. The FBI is who. Now get to that hospital, get on that bird, and get your ass to Jacksonville. Call me after you land.”
Dane could feel his head swimming. He’d never heard Charles talk to him with such hostility. This was serious if it had Charles Finnegan riled up. “What the hell is going on in Florida?”
“Listen to me, Kirby. The assistant director of the FBI asked me personally to find and send you to him, so that’s what I’m doing. I don’t ask questions. I do as I’m told. You should try it. It’s called chain of command. At the very least you should just do it because I damn well said so and that’s good enough.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. I tried coddling your ass and I got hung up on. Now get it in gear and go do what I tell you.”
Dane shot a stunned look at Ellis and his deputy, whose name he’d already forgotten. He handed off the bagged .38 to Ellis and watched both men move toward Ned. They struggled a little to keep Ned’s lower half covered as they raised him to his feet. “Yeah, Charles. Okay, I’m going now.”
“Good, and I expect a sit-rep once you’re on the ground.” GBI Deputy Director Finnegan ended the call, and Dane stared at his phone as if he’d forgotten what it was. He tucked the phone into his pocket and started the slow ascent back up the ravine to the main road. As he fought to keep his footing in the clay and pushed back the endless vines of kudzu and thorny brush, one thought played over and over in Dane’s head like a record on repeat.
What the hell just happened?
CHAPTER FIVE
Dane had never been in a helicopter before. It wasn’t as glamorous as he thought it would be. First of all, it was loud as hell, and the two young-buck agents in matching dark gray suits who had been sent to be Dane’s escorts to the city just stared at him the entire time like he was a monkey about to perform a trick. He nearly lost his hat out the wide-open side hatch of the chopper several times, and the seat belt felt more like a sad joke than a safety precaution. Dane Kirby was about a mile and a half above his comfort zone in a Plexiglas bubble, and it was fair to say he didn’t like it.
“Is someone going to tell me what is going on?” Dane felt like an idiot, having to yell above the noise of the whirling chopper blades, and even more so for having to ask the question in the first place, since Charles had told him he’d be briefed on the ride, but once they were in the air, neither of the agents, the Latino one nor the white one, said a word. One of the two men, identically dressed down to the matching sets of mirrored aviator sunglasses, put a finger to his lips and then to his ear. Dane assumed that meant he didn’t want to talk over the noise. That made him feel even dumber, being condescended to like that, so he went back to gripping his hat like a rolled-up magazine and being judged by two arrogant FBI pricks.
By the time the chopper landed on the helipad at Jacksonville International Airport, Dane couldn’t get out of the gravity-defying death machine fast enough. The same agent who’d given him the hush finger on the flight over got out first and offered him a hand. Dane ignored him and hopped out unassisted. He hit the tarmac a little harder than he wanted to, but he ignored the lightning bolt of pain that shot all the way from his heel up to his armpit. It was bad enough that he felt inferior to these stooges for being in the dark about why he was there, but he’d be damned if he was going to look like he couldn’t handle a four-foot jump. The jolt to his knees made his eyes water, but he slid his hat on and pulled it down low to shield the swelling tear before anyone could see it.
The second agent dismounted from the chopper smoothly behind them by keeping a hand on the grip by the door that Dane had failed to see. “Keep your head down,” he said as he hustled by his partner and Dane, as if all of a sudden he was in a huge hurry. Dane wanted to smack him, but he followed at a slower pace and did keep his head down. He couldn’t hide the limp and decided he didn’t care; he knew his limits, and the hell with what these guys thought.
The three of them made their way through the covered skyway to the other side of the glass enclosure, where an unmarked black Chevy Tahoe was waiting in a private lot to pick them up. All of the Bureau’s government rides were Chevys. That should’ve been a hint right there that Dane had made the wrong decision about which job to take when he retired, but not everyone understood the magic of driving a Ford. He chalked it up to inexperienced youths cutting the checks in the governor’s office. The bigger of the two agents held open the rear passenger-side door, while his partner and Dane got in. Once they were settled, the driver pushed the big black SUV into traffic and yet another agent, riding in the front seat directly in front of Dane, turned to face him. His face was familiar. Dane thought he recognized the guy as one of the higher-ups in the Federal Bureau. The FBI sometimes worked in conjunction with Dane’s office in Georgia and they were easy to recognize from their pretentious manner. They thought their shit didn’t stink. This guy was someone who wouldn’t be talking to Dane at all unless he had to and, judging by the blatant irritation on his face, clearly that was the case right now. It was easy to tell that the agent was abnormally tall, even sitting down, and looked uncomfortably cramped even in the spacious cab of the vehicle. He looked older than Dane by at least a few years, with a high widow’s peak of thinning, slicked-back hair with hints of silver that shone in the sunlight. The agent took off his sunglasses and reached a reluctant hand over the seat for Dane to shake. Dane tried to remember his name. It was something creepy.