Page 72 of Battle Mountain

Joe heard Marybeth assure Sheridan that her father was okay after all, even though he was alone in the dark in unfamiliar mountains.

“He’s on a little camping adventure,” Marybeth said with more than a little disdain in her voice. He could hear Sheridan chuckle, which was good.

Joe was pleased Sheridan was still there at the house with Marybeth, especially given the curveball the FBI agent and Sheriff Bishop had thrown at her that day. Sheridan could help ease Marybeth’s anxiety from being alone at home with only Kestrel.

He asked, “Did you find anything out about—”

“Special Agent Rick Orr,” Marybeth said, completing his question. “Yes, I did, and it only compounds the mystery as to why he visited my office.”

She said she had to use several proprietary databases and a dark web channel to learn anything about him. “He’s simply notsearchable on the internet,” she said. “That can only happen by design. He’s got zero social media presence, and Sheridan confirms it. Simply put, Orr doesn’t want to be looked up.”

“Interesting,” Joe said.

“Yeah. I had to get into the records at their headquarters in D.C. to find him listed. He’s nowhere in their public information. What I found is that Orr is the head of a task force called Special Investigations, Counter-Intelligence Unit. There’s no description of what exactly that is, and I couldn’t find any other names assigned to that group. It’s like he’s a one-man band.”

“I wonder why he’s asking about Nate, then?” Joe said.

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I can even guess. But I can tell you something that intrigues me. I found it using an AI engine I’ve never used before. It turns out that FBI Agent Rick Orr has been on the scene of a lot of historic events dating back quite a while. Here, I wrote out the list.”

Joe listened as Marybeth said, “Ruby Ridge, 1992. Waco, 1993. He was at the Bundy standoff in Nevada in 2014, and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge siege in 2016. And he was on-site for the January 6 riots or insurrection at the Capitol. Whenever there have been significant domestic extremist incidents, Rick Orr has been there.”

Joe didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure how.

“I don’t know what it means,” Marybeth said. “I’ll keep digging. So will Sheridan, she says. But it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that Orr is here because he thinks something big will happen. Either that, or he’s involved somehow. But I just don’t know.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “I don’t want to think that Nate has beenusing his time planning some kind of attack. I just don’t want to think that.”

“Me either,” she said solemnly.

Then, after a long pause, she said, “You love it right now, don’t you?” she asked. “You’re enjoying yourself.”

As usual, she could read his mind.

“I kind of do,” he confessed.

“Do I even need to tell you to be careful? To stay safe and to not do unwise things?”

“You don’t need to tell me that.”

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “please check in, in the morning. And keep your phone on tonight, like Susan advised you.”

“I’ll do both,” he said.

“Joe, promise me you’ll stay put until Susan and the search and rescue team reach you tomorrow. We don’t wantthreemissing people in those mountains.”

“Not to worry,” he said. Then: “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you, too, you idiot.”

—

Joe somehow gotturned around as he descended the promontory, and found himself searching for handholds and footholds that he hadn’t used on the way up. Finally, with his muscles trembling, he stepped down and felt soft earth beneath his boots.

“Made it,” he said to himself. Then: “Where is my shotgun?”

He circled around the base of the rock until he located it about fifty yards from where he’d come down. It was too easy to get confused about directions in the dark in a sea of trees, he admitted to himself.

Although he attempted to use the same trail to get back to the fire and his camp that he’d taken on the way up, he wasn’t sure at first that he was on it. Game trails looked the same under the light of his headlamp.

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