* * *
BY AFTERNOON CONALL WAS getting emails giving him names to go with faces. Lia’s neighbors were, of all damn things, survivalists. White supremacists. The group with whom these three were affiliated was small. A couple of members had recently bought a chunk of acreage in rural Idaho, triggering some interest but no action. They hadn’t taken out a loan, but nobody within the organization had ever held the kind of job that would have brought in money like that. Whatever was going on next door to Lia was the answer, or part of it.
Conall hadn’t seen any evidence yet that they were moving drugs, although he hadn’t ruled out the possibility. It was a tried-and-true method of raising big bucks, after all. Maybe Gordy Costello had switched his trade from weapons to white powder. Anything was possible. Conall kind of doubted it, though. He thought the neighbors were buying guns, but whether for resale or to arm themselves was another question. They wouldn’t be the first nuts with an us-against-the-world mentality. When they gathered on their Idaho enclave, they were likely to embrace a paranoid lifestyle, certain the FBI was watching through long-range binoculars.
He smiled grimly at that. Little did the fools imagine they were already being watched by federal agents.
Henderson, it developed, had worked an operation involving white supremacists who cultivated high-quality marijuana to support the war they envisioned coming between their kind and the U.S. government in its too-liberal, multi-ethnic arrogance.
Telling Conall about it, Jeff had shaken his head. “Despite the quantity they were growing and dealing, the sentences handed out were pathetic. They probably bought a new piece of property and went right back to farming the minute they got out. The profit was worth the risk.”
Yeah, wasn’t that always the case?
It occurred to Conall that his frustration with outcomes had been fueling his growing dissatisfaction with his job. Was he accomplishing anything meaningful? He’d begun to doubt it. Sometimes he wanted to do something where he could see a measurable impact. Maybe not a big one, but the faces of people he’d helped. The victims of the drug wars were mainly faceless to him. He spent his life immersed in the underworld of users and dealers. Too often decisions made and handed down from above were tainted with politics.
Maybe that was why these weeks had felt so clean to him. Why he half envied his brothers, who protected the townsfolk they considered their own.
He shook his head over the idiocy. Niall and Duncan arrested their townsfolk, too, some of whom were scum not that different from the men Conall put behind bars. Their crimes were committed on a smaller scale, that’s all.
Part of his mood, he admitted, had to do with the fact that here it was mid-afternoon and he was working instead of hanging out with Walker and Brendan. Lia had taken them somewhere a couple of hours ago; he’d heard the engine and from one of the attic windows seen her Subaru going out the driveway. He’d gone downstairs, ostensibly to use the john, but hoping to find a note. There was nothing. All he could tell was that the house was empty.
Later, Henderson had gone down and made a sandwich. He sat eating it now while he idly watched the house across the pasture.
Laptop open, Conall sprawled in the big easy chair Jeff had been enterprising enough to find behind a towering pile of boxes up here in the attic. No new email. He knew his restlessness had more to do with listening for the Subaru than because of anything he should be focusing on.
“I haven’t been pulling my weight,” Conall heard himself say.
Henderson turned to look at him in surprise. “You’re pulling your shifts.”
“Shorter ones than yours.”
“Not much. You’re doing most of the night.”
“And playing all day.”
“I’m okay up here. I don’t mind surveillance.” He hesitated. “I call my wife and we talk for a while every day.”
“No reason not to.” Uncomfortable, Conall wondered why he’d initiated this conversation.
“I wouldn’t have made friends downstairs like you have.” Weirdly, the other man was the one looking squirrely. “I’d have probably been sitting up here reading anyway.” He hesitated. “I told you once. The kids here…I don’t know what to say to them.”