Guns & Dusty Roads: The Iron Brotherhood Series (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

FBI special agent Kara Sybil’s mood that morning felt especially black.

Part of that, she was sure, was due to the fact that, thanks to stop and go traffic on her way into work, her steaming, extra-large cup of coffee had sat all but untouched in her car’s cup holder for the entire ride.  When she finally made it through the terrible snarl of traffic, it turned out that the whole thing was due to an idiot truck driver who had misread the maximum clearance on an underpass and succeeded in getting his truck thoroughly stuck.

Kara almost felt tempted to pull over and put him under arrest just for being an idiot.

Unfortunately, doing most stupid things was still not a crime, despite how many times she had pitched to Rogers, her boss, that it would solve so many problems.  “Just think of how fast we could clear these cases if we could arrest people for being idiots!” she insisted.

But every time she brought it up, Rogers just shook his head, giving her that little half-smile which meant that, although amused, his nerves were wearing thin.

After parking her car in the lot at her building (and, since she was running late, she had to park all the way out at the edge of the lot, walking the whole way across the asphalt as it already started to heat up in the rays of the morning sun), Kara took as many gulps as she could of her coffee before reaching the entrance.

She knew that, once she stepped inside the building, she wouldn’t have time to finish the cup off before it grew cold.

“Morning, Miss Sybil!”  Tom, the front security guard, greeted her with a cheery call as soon as Kara stepped inside.  He leaned over the desk to give her a jaunty little wave.

Kara bit down on her first reaction, which was to growl at the man in return.  It wasn’t his fault that he was a morning person.  Although, in her mind, being awake before eight in the morning ought to be outlawed as well.

“Hi, Tom,” she said back instead, forcing her voice to contain at least the faintest little miniscule note of friendliness.  “Anything new?”

Tom might be annoyingly friendly, especially in the morning, but he treated everyone that way - and it paid off, Kara had learned.  The man had his finger on the pulse of the entire building.  And now, as he leaned in a little towards her and raised his eyebrows slightly, she knew he had something for her.

“Rogers has a new lead,” he told her in a carrying whisper.  “The gun running case?  Some new development.”

Now, that got Kara’s attention!  The gun running case, as Tom put it, had been at the forefront of the Bureau’s interest for the last six months.  Someone, a new player, was seizing control of most of the gun shipments coming across the United States’ southern border, amping up imports.

Whenever gun smuggling went up, a whole host of other crimes followed close behind, and this caught the attention of the public eye.  Once something was in the public eye, Kara knew, it would soon hit the front desk of politicians, and then the Bureau would find itself being called out and challenged by any two-bit politician who wanted to shift blame away from his latest scandal. 

If the Bureau had no leads, of course, they would get clobbered by reporters, accusing them of “doing nothing.”  Never mind, of course, all the other cases that the Bureau regularly solved, and all the good that they did.  If they couldn’t tackle this one case, it didn’t matter to the press.

But now, from the sound of it, there was a lead!  Maybe this would help keep the press off their back.  That was a small bright note for Kara.

“So, how are you doing?” Tom added, after sharing this little bit of news.  “Maybe you got a free night coming up?”

Kara had to hold back a sigh.  Tom never quite came right out and told her that he was interested, but he’d been hinting at getting a date with her for months, now.  Never mind the fact that Kara was not interested in dating anyone right now, much less someone from work.  He never quite asked her outright, but he always seemed to be probing, hoping that she would someday take pity on him and throw him a bone.

Not likely to happen.  “Sounds like I’ll be pretty busy with this new lead,” Kara shot back, and headed past him, deeper into the building and up to her desk.

As soon as she arrived at her desk, however, Rogers appeared, frowning at her even before she’d had a chance to set down her half-empty cup of coffee.  “Sybil, conference room, now,” he growled at her, the frown that was the standard expression on his face putting lines going all the way up his bald head.  “You’re late!”

“Traffic,” Kara shot back, dumping her briefcase into her desk chair, but keeping hold of her coffee.  “I still say that you should revisit that arresting idiots suggestion.”

Her boss stared blankly at her a moment longer, and then turned and headed off to the conference room.  Kara followed close behind, trying to sneak a few more sips of coffee as she walked.

Most of the seats in the conference room, swivel chairs around a long wooden table, were already filled with suited agents when Kara entered.  A waving hand caught her attention, and she spotted Charlie down at the far end of the table.  The young man had his laptop open in front of him, as usual, but also seemed to be protecting the spot next to him.  He gave her a little wiggle of his fingers, and then pointed at the empty chair next to him.

The man must have been saving that for her.  Charlie’s scruffy beard looked especially out of place, and his tie was horribly knotted, but he was still a sight for sore eyes.  Once again, Kara was glad that she bothered to keep on the good side of people like Charlie.  Most agents didn’t treat tech support with much respect, but Kara appreciated their work just as much as, and sometimes more than, the work by other FBI agents.

Kara shot him a smile of thanks as she sat down next to him - but before she could say anything, Rogers came sweeping into the room, instantly commanding control of all conversations.

“We’ve got a lead!” he boomed out, slamming one big fist down on the table.  Rogers was somewhere in the range between forty and sixty - his bald head, which he shaved every day, made it very tough to estimate his age - but he was one of those men that would likely be intimidating even as a senior citizen.  His big frame made him look more like a bouncer than an FBI agent, and his suits always looked ill-fitting on his huge arms and chest, but no one dared to suggest he visit a tailor.  He was humorless, ever-serious, and always focused on one thing only - the job at hand.

“As some of you might have heard,” Rogers continued, his dark-eyed gaze sweeping around the table, “we were tracking some of the incoming gun shipments, looking at smugglers that we’ve busted or leaned on in the past.  They aren’t talking, of course, but they seem like prime targets for this new group, moving in and taking over, to eliminate.”

Across the table, Kara saw Shaw, another one of the FBI agents, leaning back and preening a little.  She glared at the man, but her anger bounced harmlessly off of his shield of smugness.  Kara knew that it had been Shaw’s suggestion to shadow the suspected dealers, and he would be insufferable now that it had paid off.

“Well, one of those dealers turned up dead last night!” Rogers finished, slamming his fist down on the table again.  “Not so good for him, but it’s a lead for us!”

Next to her, Charlie tapped a few keys, and the screen behind Rogers blinked into life.  The face of a small, wiry, scrawny looking man appeared on the screen, along with a pinned location on Google Maps.

“This is Mario Mendez,” Rogers told the assembled agents.  “Suspected smuggler, busted for some small offenses, but we heard he was looking to move up to the big time.  Well, he did so - and it got him killed.  This spot on the map is a bar and truck stop where we found his body this morning.”

Rogers paused for a moment.  “We found his body - but his truck was missing,” he added.

Kara straightened up in her seat, as did most of the other agents sitting around the conference table.  That was a real lead!  They could track the truck, could figure out who had taken it - and they would have their first big break in this whole case!

“Now, we also asked at the bar, tried to get in contact with some of the patrons who might have been around last night,” Rogers continued.  “And we do have one lead, although it’s pretty thin.  One man reported that a biker had stopped in and might have chatted with Mendez.  Another man reported hearing the sound of motorcycles outside, although he can’t recall whether this was before or after Mendez stopped into the bar.”

Across the table from Kara, Agent Shaw sat forward, putting his own hand on the table.  The sound wasn’t as loud as when Rogers did it, but it still made the senior agent pause. 

“The biggest lead here, clearly, is the trailer itself,” Shaw announced, somehow managing to sound utterly confident in his own prediction.  “We should be focusing on following up on that, not this biker possibility.”

Rogers nodded at him.  “This is a big case, and we’re going to follow up on everything,” he said.  Did he glare a little at Shaw?  Maybe that was just Kara’s wishful thinking.  “We’re going to split up the leads among you, get as many feet on the ground as we can.”

As this pronouncement stirred up some murmuring among the agents around the table, Charlie leaned over to Kara.  “Already checked the transponder on the missing truck,” he whispered to her.  “Been not just shut off, but totally disabled.  That truck’s gonna be impossible to find.”

Kara nodded slightly, giving him a pat on the shoulder.  Charlie definitely deserved more thanks than he received.

“So, who wants what?” Rogers called out at the head of the table, cutting through the conversations. 

“I’ve got the trailer covered,” Shaw called out before anyone else could speak, straightening his tie with one hand as he spoke.  The man sounded so breezily confident about it, as if he would have this whole matter wrapped up by lunch.  Oh, how Kara wanted to slap that smug smile off his face!

But this was okay with her, especially considering Charlie’s little tidbit of information.  “If it’s all right, sir, I’ll take the biker angle,” Kara called out as soon as Shaw shut his mouth.

Rogers glanced over at her, raising his eyebrows.  “You know anything about bikers, Agent Sybil?” he asked.

“I do, sir,” Kara responded, putting as much confidence into her voice as possible.

She did not add that most of this knowledge came from watching fictional TV shows about them, late at night.  The Bureau didn’t need to know about that particular facet of her life.

Rogers’ eyebrows stayed slightly raised, but he nodded.  “Great.  It’s yours,” he responded. 

Kara stood up, not waiting for the rest of the agents in the room to select their areas of focus for the case.  She had her lead, and she wasn’t going to waste any more time.  Inside her head, she was already plotting out her next steps.

Special Agent Kara Sybil was all business, determined and focused on her job.  She didn’t have any other distractions in her life, no matter how many times people like Tom kept on hinting at her for a date.

She had a job, and that was all that she needed.

CHAPTER 2

A few minutes later, Special Agent Kara Sybil looked up as Charlie, the tech support guy from the meeting, paused as he walked by her desk.  “Hey, um, how are things going?” he asked awkwardly, making it obvious that he wanted to stay and linger.

Kara sighed, but nodded to the chair next to her desk.  “Why don’t you take a seat, Charlie?” she suggested, knowing that the man wouldn’t go away until he got the invitation, but also wouldn’t simply sit down without her invite. 

Happily, the man plopped down in the seat next to the desk, although the well-worn and creased leather barely budged under his light weight.  Kara made sure to finish up typing the last line of her report, taking her time, before rotating around to give Charlie her full attention.

When she finally turned to him, the man grinned at her, waggling his eyebrows.  “You know something,” he told her, the comment less of a question than a statement, voiced in teasing tones.

Kara almost broke into a grin at the man’s impish look, but she kept her face blank.  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Back there, in the meeting.”  Charlie didn’t waste any time dancing around the subject.  “As soon as that biker angle came up, you jumped all over it.  You weren’t even waiting to hear the rest of the report.”

“And besides,” he continued as Kara rolled her eyes at him, “you didn’t even stick around to argue with Shaw’s choice!  You always go after what he picks, because he does pick the best leads.  But not this time - this time, you just let him have it!  See, you’d only do something like that if you know something that the rest of us don’t!”

For a minute, Kara weighed her options.  Charlie wasn’t exactly a blabbermouth, but the man did tend to get excited when he knew a piece of confidential information, and he was terrible at hiding a secret.

On the other hand, she did get along well with him - somewhat of a rarity for Kara, who found that her focused demeanor and lack of humor often tended to be a deterrent to most men.  She wasn’t quite sure why.  But Charlie always seemed to simply make enough jokes for both of them, happily filling the silences that always seemed to pop up in their conversations.