Chapter 6 - THE MEN BEHIND THE BADGEBy sunrise, Sheriff Wade Harlan had disappeared.
His house was empty.
His county-issued SUV sat behind the sheriff’s station.
His personal truck was found at a hunting cabin twenty miles away.
No Wade.
That made him more dangerous.
A powerful man protecting a kingdom behaves predictably.
A cornered man watching his kingdom collapse does not.
Federal warrants rolled across Pine Ridge before breakfast.
Harlan Recovery and Logistics was raided.
County offices were sealed.
Judge Robert Leland’s chambers were searched.
Commissioner Hayes was detained for questioning.
Curtis Harlan tried to drive through a federal roadblock and made it forty feet.
The story exploded.
Television vans appeared outside Miller’s Diner.
Suddenly everyone who had been afraid to whisper about Wade wanted to speak.
People brought records.
Photographs.
Old citations.
Property documents.
Medical bills.
Stories accumulated faster than investigators could process them.
A farmer named Steven Moss said deputies had seized $18,000 in cash from his truck and never charged him.
A widow named Janet Cole said her land was condemned after she rejected a lowball purchase offer from a company connected to Curtis.
A teenager’s mother claimed Wade had threatened her son after he recorded deputies beating a man outside a bar.
Fear was changing sides.
But Wade remained missing.
Agent Grant wanted Rebecca and me outside the county.
I refused.
Rebecca surprised me.
“So do I.”
I looked at her.
“This could get worse.”
“It already did.”
“That isn’t an argument.”
“No. This is.”
She placed Charlie Boone’s envelope on the table.
“I spent twenty-eight years letting Wade decide what scared me. I’m done.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
We stayed at a federal safe location rather than home.
Tom coordinated with investigators.
By afternoon, Luke Carson asked to speak with me.
The young deputy arrived escorted by two agents.
He looked like he hadn’t slept.
“I’m cooperating,” he said.
“Good.”
“I need you to know something.”
“Then tell Grant.”
“I did.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He sat.
“Wade didn’t recognize you at first.”
“At the diner?”
“No. Before.”
My attention sharpened.
“He started asking about you two months ago. Curtis brought him a picture.”
“What picture?”
“One from overseas.”
The same source Charlie found?
“Wade said somebody had hired them to watch you.”
“Who?”
“Man named Victor Sloane.”
Tom, standing behind me, went motionless.
I knew the name too.
Victor Sloane had been a Northstar executive.
Never convicted.
He testified that he knew nothing about the fraud.
Three subordinate executives went to prison.
Sloane walked.
“What did he want?”
Carson rubbed his hands together.
“He told Wade you had something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Wade believed you did.”
Tom stepped forward.
“Sloane lives in Virginia.”
Carson nodded.
“He came here twice.”
“When?”
“Last month. Then three days ago.”
Rebecca whispered, “Before the diner.”
Carson looked at her.
“Yes.”
“What was Wade supposed to do?”
Carson swallowed.
“Provoke Cole. Arrest him. Search the house.”
“For?”
“An encrypted drive.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“I don’t have one.”
“Wade didn’t know that.”
Tom’s expression grew grim.
“But Sloane thought he did.”
Pieces began connecting.
Charlie had found my name while investigating Northstar.
Maybe someone monitoring Charlie learned he intended to contact me.
They assumed he had successfully transferred evidence.
Rebecca had unknowingly kept only the memory card Charlie left.
But Sloane believed there was more.
“Why the milkshake?” Rebecca asked.
Carson looked ashamed.
“Wade wanted witnesses to see Cole become violent.”
I understood.
“Trigger an assault.”
“Yes.”
“And if I hit him?”
“You’d be arrested immediately. Search incident expands. News reports make you look unstable. Your military record gets leaked. Maybe they say PTSD.”
Tom muttered, “Classic character assassination.”
Carson nodded.
“When you didn’t react, Wade panicked.”
“So he planted the gun.”
“Yes.”
“Who fired at my house?”
Carson lowered his head.
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t believe him.
He looked at me.
“I swear.”
Maybe he didn’t.
Grant entered.
“We found Wade.”
Everyone turned.
“Where?”
“Not him physically. His phone hit a tower near Lake Briar.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
Wade’s old message.
Remember Lake Briar?
I looked at her.
“What’s there?”
“His family owns cabins.”
Grant was already deploying teams.
Rebecca stood.
“I know which one.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“Cole—”
“You’re not going.”
“He could hide in dozens of places around the lake.”
“Give them directions.”
She clenched her jaw.
“Fine.”
That was growth.
An hour later, agents approached the Harlan cabin.
Empty.
But they found something else.
A hidden office.
Cash.
Burner phones.
Documents.
And photographs.
Hundreds.
Judges.
County officials.
Business owners.
Residents.
Blackmail files.
Wade hadn’t simply intimidated Pine Ridge.
He had catalogued its secrets.
Affairs.
Drug use.
Tax fraud.
Private photographs.
Police reports that never became public.
He controlled people because he knew exactly what they feared losing.
Then Grant found a file labeled R. MERCER.
Rebecca.
Inside were photographs taken over twenty years.
Some from before we met.
Some recent.
Rebecca shopping.
Rebecca jogging.
Rebecca at our mailbox.
Me leaving town.
Our house.
The garage.
Wade hadn’t merely resumed bothering an old girlfriend.
He had been watching her.
For years.
When Grant showed us, Rebecca stopped breathing for several seconds.
Then she became furious.
“I want him found.”
“He will be,” Grant said.
Tom entered holding another document.
“We have a bigger issue.”
He placed a printed email on the table.
It had been recovered from Wade’s burner device.
From Victor Sloane.
If Mercer cannot be discredited, proceed to permanent resolution. No improvisation. Retrieve Boone material first.
I read it twice.
Rebecca’s hand found mine.
Grant said, “That gives us conspiracy.”
“It also tells us Sloane believes Boone had more.”
Tom nodded.
“Question is whether he did.”
I thought back to Charlie’s video.
Every word.
Every gesture.
If Cole Mercer ever sees this, tell him I’m sorry.
Why sorry?
Because he had dragged me into it?
Maybe.
Or because he had done something else.
I remembered the repair shop.
Charlie’s old property was abandoned.
Federal investigators had searched it superficially after his death, but nobody had known what they were looking for.
“I need to see Charlie’s shop.”
Grant shook her head immediately.
“No.”
“I know machinery.”
“So do forensic technicians.”
“Charlie was a mechanic. Mechanics hide things differently.”
Tom looked at me.
“You have an idea?”
“Maybe.”
Grant resisted for ten minutes.
Eventually we went with a full federal escort.
Charlie Boone’s shop looked frozen in time.
Dust.
Old lifts.
Tool cabinets.
A half-disassembled Ford engine.
I walked slowly.
Not looking for a safe.
Looking for something wrong.
Mechanics create habits.
Wrenches placed by size.
Parts stored by type.
Frequently used tools near waist height.
Then I saw it.
An old transmission sitting on a workbench.
Too clean.
I touched the casing.
Recent sealant.
“Here.”
Agents photographed it.
Then opened the housing.
Inside, wrapped in oil-resistant plastic, was a small encrypted solid-state drive.
Nobody spoke.
Tom looked at me.
“Sloane was right.”
I stared at the drive.
Charlie had hidden evidence.
He simply never gave it to me.
Then a federal agent outside shouted.
“Movement!”
Gunfire cracked.
Everyone dropped.
Agents rushed toward the doors.
A vehicle smashed through the rear fence.
I glimpsed the driver through a dusty window.
Wade Harlan.
He had been waiting.
And he wasn’t alone.
In the passenger seat sat Victor Sloane.
The man behind Northstar.
The man who had apparently hired Wade to ruin me.
Their vehicle vanished down the access road as federal SUVs pursued.
But they had made one mistake.
They had come back because they believed the drive was still hidden.
Which meant whatever Charlie had saved on it was important enough to make desperate men risk everything.
May you like
Tom stared at the tiny device.
“Maybe we should find out why.”
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