Page 30 of Battle Mountain

“Yes,” Geronimo said. “He got his legs blown out in Portland a few years back. Now, go on.”

“Yeah, well,” Reese said. “He didn’t identify himself as Axel Soledad. He gave me a fake name, Dallas Cates, or something like that. It was only later that I put two and two together.”

Nate didn’t react, even though Cates, an ex-con with a bottomless grudge against Nate and Joe, and who had allied himself with Soledad, had been directly responsible for Liv’s murder. And Nate had dealt with him the best way he knew how.

“Anyway, he seemed like a good guy,” Reese said. “Friendly, capable. One of us, you know? He asked me about my military service, and he did it in a way that suggested he was a vet. I told him about feeling completely betrayed by the U.S. government, and especially by the higher-ups. About how they sent us into harm’s way in Afghanistan and then betrayed us. He said he had a similar story—”

“You don’t need to go into all of that,” Geronimo said. “I’ve read the threads. Tell us what Soledad did when he was here in this house.”

“He was casing me out, is what he did,” Reese said. “The whole time, he was probing me to see where I stood. He got me to like and trust him, and I’m not an easy mark. I showed him my inventory and then I helped load up that Civic with seven semiauto long guns and six combat shotguns. It was my biggest sales to a single individual ever. Then he gave me a check inside an envelope and said he’d be in touch.”

Reese paused and spat out a series of curses before continuing: “Only after he left did I open the envelope and look at the check to see it belonged to someone named Katy Cotton of Walden, Colorado. And when I tried to cash it I found out the account had all of two hundred and twenty-five dollars in it. That son of a bitch stole somebody’s checkbook and screwed me.”

“Katy Cotton?” Geronimo asked Nate.

“Joe Pickett’s birth mother,” Nate said. “It’s a long story, but he hadn’t seen her for years until her body was found less than a mile from his house a year ago. She’d been murdered by a carjacker who disappeared. Now we know it was Axel and he drove straight up here to arm up.”

“He’s a son of a bitch,” Reese said. “He got me to trust him and then he screwed me.”

“When did he contact you again?” Geronimo asked.

“End of summer,” Reese said. “He sent me an encrypted message on Bal-Chatri. He said he liked my posts and he said he was assembling some guys to get revenge on people who betrayed us overseas. At that point, I didn’t realize that Soledad and the guy who screwed me out of my inventory were one and the same.”

Geronimo moaned. “Axel must have figured out how to get back on the site after we locked him out. I don’t know how he did it.”

“He’s diabolical, is what he is,” Reese said, his eyes bulging. “And he strung me along and said all the right things about reclaiming our country from those bastards. I was ready to sign up with him and join him, if you want to know the truth.”

“Why didn’t you?” Nate asked.

“Because he tripped up,” Reese said with a satisfied leer. “He mentioned that he could send a couple of his guys to Gardiner to pick me up. But I had never revealed on the site where I lived. Not even the state. My profile on the site is anonymous, like most of the members. I’ve never mentioned it in my profile or on the threads, have I, Geronimo?”

Geronimo agreed. “No. It wasn’t until I spoke to you directly that you told me where you lived.”

“But Axel knew, that bastard,” Reese said. “Because he’d been to my house and had stolen twenty-five thousand dollars of my inventory. Now he wanted me to join up with him. He must have thought I was really stupid not to figure out that this Dallas Cates, whoever he is, and Axel Soledad were the same guy. That’s when I bolted and refused to respond to any of his messages. He must have known he fucked up.”

“That’s where the Giantess comes in,” Geronimo prompted.

“Yes. She contacted me through BC as well.”

“Damn it,” Geronimo spat. “How many impostors do we have on my site?”

“She wanted to meet me and hear all about Axel,” Reese said. “She wanted to come here, but I didn’t want anyone else knowing where I lived. Finally, we agreed to meet in Billings at a little restaurant there. I hoped she’d help me find Axel, and she seemed to know a lot about him.”

“What is she like?” Geronimo asked.

Reese’s eyes widened again and he stood up and reached high above his head. “She’s really tall,” he said, indicating with his hand her height of about seven feet. “Really tall, and blond. But proportional, you know? She made me feel like some kind of midget. To be honest, I was kind of scared of her.”

“What kinds of questions did she ask you?” Geronimo said.

“It was mainly about what Axel was up to. I had to tell her I didn’t know any specifics, because I don’t. I only know the general outline, you know? She kept pressing, but I held firm. She said she was following up with people across the country who had been contacted by Soledad, trying to put some kind of lawsuit or case together. She was vague about that.”

“Who does she represent?” Nate asked.

Reese shrugged. “Not me. I asked her to go after him to get my inventory back at least, but she said she didn’t want to get involved with a large weapons transaction.”

As he said it, Reese looked away and Nate noticed.

“You sold him the guns without a background check, didn’t you? The sale is technically illegal.”

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