Mona said, “All we can do now is wait.”
Sam asked, “Do you have any ideas on what these pictures mean?”
“No, but my guess is, it doesn’t bode well.”
***
Hunter arrived fifty minutes later. Mona told the dogs to behave and walked with Hunter into the house. Sam said, “What did you do, fly?”
“It’s all that special driver’s training they gave me at Glynco. I can drive the speed limit just like a regular citizen, and cover twice as much ground.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Einstein’s theory.”
Mona said, “Come on, I’ll show you what we have.”
Hunter didn’t move. She looked at Sam, then at Miguel. Her frank stare made Miguel nervous. It was her eyes.
Mona said, “Okay, sit down. The kitchen table is as good a place as any to hear all this.”
“Before we get into that, I want to hear what this man has to say.” She indicated Miguel with a nod of her head. “Miguel, right?”
Miguel nodded. Sam said, “Hunter, Miguel is here to help.”
“Relax Sam. That’s why I’m not taking him in yet.”
Mona said, “We might as well get comfortable. Telling all these stories might take a while.” They took seats, and Hunter sat across from Miguel.
Hunter said in Spanish, “Tell me everything you saw, anyone you talked to, and everything that happened on your journey. Leave out nothing.”
Miguel took a deep breath and told her about travelling from his home in the Sierras to the border, how he avoided armed gangs of bandits and cartel members by travelling on foot through the country and staying off the roads, then how he crossed the Rio Bravo just before daylight and walked as fast as he could because he knew the Patrulla, the Border Patrol, might find his tracks.
He looked at Hunter when he said it, and she nodded, “Yes, my partner and I found your tracks and followed you.”
Miguel continued his story, telling of the falling man and the helicopter and being shot, then making it, barely, to Sam Kinney’s ranch.
Sam took over the story then, and he didn’t leave anything out, including his opinions. Mona told her part after that, but left out who she thought the watch owner was. She also didn’t tell any of them about the high-level encrypted radio chatter and other communications in Mexico she intercepted, or about the increased presence of CISEN along the border.
Hunter leaned back in her chair and balanced so the front two legs were off the floor, “Where’s the watch?” Mona retrieved the watch, and a stack of images from her back office, and put them on the kitchen table. Hunter went through the images first, before inspecting the watch. When she finished, Hunter said, “One thing’s for sure, all this is a stirred up hornet’s nest. We don’t have shootings from helicopters, then ranches burned and the owners shot at for some reason we can’t even figure out. Other than taking Miguel in and sending him back to Mexico, I don’t know what else I can do but report what you told me to my supervisors and let them do something with it.”
Mona changed her mind and told Hunter the rest of it, including about CISEN. “This isn’t a little thing, Hunter. It has big trouble written all over it. I just don’t know how yet. The Agent didn’t take all the photos randomly. They mean something.”
Hunter looked at Sam and Miguel, then at Mona, “How much do these two know about you?”
“I think Sam knows some, but Miguel, none.”
Hunter leaned the chair forward so the front legs touched the floor, and put her forearms on the table, shuffling the pictures with her hands. “Are you going to contact any of your former people?”
“I would rather stay out of it. Let it happen through others. I’ll work on things, but I will only go through you.”
“Unless there’s no other way.”
Mona nodded, “Unless that.”
Hunter nodded. “I’ll have to tell my supervisor about this, and I’m going to tell Lee Rodriguez about it, too.”
Mona said, “Don’t do it on the radio or a cell.”