Page 57 of Battle Mountain

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The new waitresslaughed at that.

The bartender filled their trays with orders. Peaches had so many drinks to deliver that balancing her tray required a deft hoisting maneuver. As she turned to deliver her orders, she shot a quick glance over her shoulder to the new waitress.

“You forgot your name tag,” Peaches said.

“Oh, damn,” the new waitress said. She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and found the badge she’d been given that morning and pinned it above the right pocket of her Western shirt.

“Don’t forget again, ‘Allison from Wyoming,’ ” Peaches said with a warm smile. “These folks love to ask about where you’re from. It breaks the ice.”

Allison smiled to herself and thought,That’s not all that’s going to be broken here.

Chapter Thirteen

Marybeth Pickett wasbehind the desk in her office at the Twelve Sleep County Library when she looked up and saw the shadows of two broad-shouldered men through the upper pane of smoked glass in her door. She was in the midst of finalizing the annual budget for the facility after the county commissioners had once again slashed her request by fifteen percent.

The adjustment was not as painful as it’d once been, she reassured herself, because over the years she’d learned to pad the request by twenty to thirty percent so the inevitable cut wouldn’t be debilitating. She hated that she had become such a bureaucrat since she’d been named director of the library, but the commissioners had all but forced her into it. Especially the hardcore retired feedstore owner, who asked her out loud, “Why in the hell do we fund a library when we have the internet?”

Kestrel was playing quietly with books and toys directly behind Marybeth in the corner of the office. She’d just gotten up from a nap, and it took the toddler a while to fully wake up. Thatin-between time was always a wonderful period to be with and around the child, and it was when Kestrel’s innate sweetness showed through.

A man’s voice said, “Knock-knock” as he rapped on the door and then opened it.

Sheriff Jackson Bishop stuck his head in and grinned at Marybeth like a Hollywood leading man. He wore a crisp silver cowboy hat and his blue eyes twinkled.

“Can I bother you for a few minutes?” he asked.

Before she could answer, he fully opened the door and entered. There was another man behind him she didn’t recognize. The man was older, in his sixties, and he had a kindly, scholarly air about him. He wore a trench coat, which was very unusual attire in Saddlestring.

“Come on in,” she said. “I’m working on our budget.”

“I figured you might be,” Bishop said as he removed his hat and gracefully sat down in one of the hardback chairs facing Marybeth. “They gave you a haircut the other night at the commissioners’ meeting.”

What he didn’t need to say was that the sheriff’s department budget had sailed through the proceedings with no cuts at all. In fact, the retired feedstore owner had proposed a fifteen percent increase overall, citing potential threats to the community from illegal migrants, who had yet to arrive.

Sheriff Bishop placed his hat on his lap, and Marybeth noted that he didn’t do it crown-down as Joe would have insisted on.

“This is Special Agent Rick Orr of the FBI,” Bishop said, glancing toward the man who loomed over his shoulder. “He came by the office today and asked a bunch of questions, only a few ofwhich I could answer. But I told him you might be able to help him out.”

“I guess that depends on what the questions are.”

“The inquiry I’m working on involves Nate Romanowski and a man named Axel Soledad,” Orr said, breaking in. Then he removed a card from his breast pocket and slid it across the desk toward her. His address was Langley, Virginia.

Marybeth was intrigued, and she waved to the empty chair next to the sheriff for Orr. He sat down.

“You’re a long way from home,” she said.

“I rarely travel out west,” he replied. “It’s…interesting.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant.

“It’s no secret that Nate has been a friend of our family for years,” she said while feeling her defenses go up. “I haven’t seen Nate for nearly a year, though. I’m not sure I can help you.”

Every word of it was true.

“My understanding is that your husband is away at the moment,” Orr said. “I’d like to ask the same questions of him.”

Marybeth was familiar with several of Joe’s interactions with federal agents in the past and she knew not to say too much, and certainly not to lie when giving her answers. Some unscrupulous feds loved to go after civilians for violating a federal statute known as 18 U.S.C. 1001, which criminalized false statements or concealing anything from a federal investigator. The statute could also be twisted to include memory lapses or misstating dates or timelines. A number of FBI agents didn’t record their conversations with subjects, so it would be their word against hers in court if it ever came to that.

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