Dead Shot by Jack Patterson (adventure books to read .TXT) 📕

he had at closed corporate gatherings. But Walker, the innocent basketball coach needing a few hours to help support his elderly mother, passed his background check without as much as a raised eyebrow. He had a few run-ins with the law, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to make Gold suspect Walker wasn’t who he claimed to be.

Yet Gold’s failsafe had been eluded and now he was dealing with his nightmare scenario. Not only that, but Walker had been working with another agent. How much the other agent knew was a wild card. If they were really working together, Walker wouldn’t have likely tied him up. At this point, Gold had to take a risk. Without one, life as he had crafted it for the good people of Statenville would be gone forever. One misstep and Statenville would turn into a rural ghost town like every other small town in America that hadn’t figured out a way to beat the gloomy economic times. But Gold only told himself that to assuage his conscience. He knew it was never really about Statenville or its people.

He took a deep breath. Hyperventilating wouldn’t allow him to think clearly.

Then he stopped and smiled. It was in moments like these that he patted himself on the back for adding every local law enforcement personnel to the Cloverdale Industries payroll. It was strictly a cash payroll with laundered money hand delivered weekly in an unmarked envelope. It bought Gold the extra help he needed when he needed it.

Right now, he needed it more than ever.

***

Walker sped toward Cloverdale Industries. His long deep-cover assignment was almost over. It would already be over if Cooper had his way. Not everyone at the FBI’s Salt Lake field office agreed with Walker’s tactics. In fact, most people didn’t. Going off script and using unorthodox – and at times, illegal – methods to achieve his assignment didn’t make him popular.

But when Cooper showed up and began leveling career-ending accusations, Walker knew he had to overstep protocol bounds to get the job done. He wanted out of the hellhole he referred to as Statenville. And if he had his way, every TV station with a news crew within 500 miles would descend upon this podunk town and cover the story of the year. He didn’t care that he would never get any credit for single-handedly taking down the Northwest’s biggest drug cartel. His just reward would be seeing the Statenville city limits sign vanish in his rearview mirror never to be seen with his own two eyes ever again.

However, there was still plenty of work remaining in order to get released from his assignment.

Code Enfuego for Buddy Walker!

His scanner, tuned into the local sheriff’s office, squawked an esoteric code as well as a brief description of Walker and his car from a dispatcher.

It was in moments like these that he reveled in the fact that Elliott Mercer was sitting right next to him in the passenger’s seat.

Chapter 47

Kelly stared at the formulas surrounding her on the walls of Walker’s research lab and occasional prison. She snapped a photo of each picture with her iPhone and emailed them to her personal account.

“What is it?” Cal demanded, growing impatient with Kelly’s cryptic response and behavior.

“I think Walker was meddling with crystal meth by adding some interesting chemicals.”

“Chemicals that would kill someone?” Guy asked, trying to keep up.

“It doesn’t look like it, but chemicals are a fickle thing. If he added too much of one thing, it could create a different reaction than he anticipated.”

“Like scratching yourself to death?” Cal asked.

“Maybe. I need to study this a little bit more to figure out exactly what he was trying to do and look up some side effects of these drugs. But that’s my working theory.”

“Scratching yourself to death? What are you talking about, Kelly?” Guy had abandoned all ideas of self-preservation. He couldn’t resist a hard news story that included murder and government cover-ups. Guy was all in.

“Cal, show him those pictures.”

Cal called up the series of photos he took at the coroner’s office, revealing the gruesome nature of the teenagers’ deaths.

“Oh, my ...” Guy’s voice trailed off. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“If Walker laced some of the Cloverdale crystal meth with some chemical, those deaths weren’t accidental,” Kelly said.

“Those are some serious allegations, Kelly,” Guy chimed, fully engaged with his editor eye on the situation. “If you’re going to make those charges, you need solid proof. But before that, you need to ask why he would do that in the first place.”

“Good question. I’ll let Cal answer that one,” Kelly said, sensing Guy’s sudden interest in telling this story. “In the meantime, we need to figure out what Walker was putting in the drugs at Cloverdale. We need to stop any more of those tainted drugs from getting in the distribution network, as crazy as that might sound.”

“We can’t do anything about today’s shipment, but maybe we can stop tomorrow’s if we alert the right people,” Cal said.

“I’ve got a contact in forensics at the FBI field office in Salt Lake City. He owes me a favor. If you hustle, you can make it there in about two hours. I’ll text you with details about where to meet him. And I’ll stay here and figure out why Buddy Walker would be tainting drugs at Cloverdale.”

“Sounds like a good plan, boss.”

They all headed toward the exit, anxious to do some more digging, nervous about the off chance that Dawkins might wander into the barn at any moment.

“Oh, and Cal, take my Yamaha VMAX,” Guy said, tossing him the key. “It’s parked on the road that runs along the side of this property. That bike is a lot less conspicuous than Kelly’s red sports car.”

Dusk was beginning to settle in over southeastern Idaho. A long night lay ahead for The Register’s three most dedicated newsroom staff, who were unaware that this would be their final night as employees of the paper.

Chapter 48

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