Jessica R. Patch - Recovered Secrets

She closed her eyes and a flash of memory came. She was dressed all in black, carrying the long black case up a flight of stairs.

She opened her eyes and slid the barrel forward until it was fully seated against the barrel stop. Quickly she slid the impact bumper into position, locked the rear pin into the barrel key, followed two more steps and put the upper receiver into position. After a few more swift maneuvers, she placed the midlock pin through the midlock hole in front of the magazine well on the bottom of the rifle until it was fully seated, locking the upper and lower receivers together. Once the receivers were mated, she loaded and inserted the magazine.

She heard the click and tugged on the magazine to ensure it was properly placed.

“Do you want me to shoot it too?” she asked, adjusting the pad to her shoulder and setting her sights.

“Do you want to shoot it?” Hollis asked.

Her stomach leaped and twisted. Fear and excitement rushed her. “I kinda do. See that tree about two hundred yards? There’s a broken branch.”

“You wanna hit a broken branch.” His tone all but screamed “too easy.”

“I want to hit that leaf dangling off the end.”

Hollis didn’t laugh, and she was only sort of joking. “Okay,” he whispered.

She set her sights. Looked up, peered through her scope. Grabbed her locket and kissed it, as if she’d done it a hundred times before. She thought she heard Hollis make a noise like a grunt, but she didn’t focus on him. She focused on her breathing and the target. Aimed. Fired.

The leaf blew to bits.

A wave of adrenaline raced through her, warming her blood and giving her a serious energy boost. She stood and shook her head. “I was half kidding. I didn’t think I could do it.”

“I knew you’d do it.” He held up a stopwatch. “I knew it when you beat my time. I can assemble this in twenty-four seconds. You did it in twenty-three, and that was with a slow start.”

She stared at the rifle, at the stopwatch, at the obliterated leaf. “Who am I?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

How could she remember assembling the gun and even the proper parts by name, but no memory of using it? How had she learned to do this and at such a fast rate? She must have been important in the military. “Wouldn’t the military be looking for me if I was still active?”

“They would.”

“Don’t you think they would have found me?” Her heart missed a beat as terror washed over the high she’d been on. “Why haven’t they? Unless...”

“You might not be military, Grace.”

She might be something sinister.

Hollis’s cell phone rang and he pulled it from his black fatigue pants. “It’s CCM.” He answered and put it on Speaker. “Hollis and Grace here.”

“Hey, guys. It’s Wilder.”

“And Wheezer,” the computer analyst piped in.

“And Wheezer,” Wilder said with a chuckle. “Since he’s itching to have a chat with y’all, I’ll let him give you the news.”

Finally, some news after ages of not having any.

“Wheezer here, again.”

Grace grinned at Hollis and he returned it.

“Here’s what we believe. The Dr. Sayer you’re searching for may be Patsy Mae Sayer. Sixty-one years old. Never been married. Works for the CDC but she disappeared two years ago when she worked overseas in Bogota, Colombia. She was researching yellow fever and malaria among refugees, and who knows what other top secret stuff.”

Hollis frowned. “Where was she before Bogota? Isn’t Atlanta where the CDC is based?”

“She’s spent decades in South America—mostly Bogota, but before that, yes. She’s from Illinois. Went to school at Yale. She’s a genius. PhD, Genetic bioengineer. It’s crazy how smart this woman is,” Wheezer said.

“I believe this is your doctor,” Wilder said. “For one, the timeline fits and no other Dr. Sayer is missing. Bogota may be the key link. If she was there and Latino men have come looking for her, then Colombians make sense. You may be connected to Bogota, Grace.”

Grace shivered. Why would she have been there? She couldn’t even remember where Colombia was, but she sure as the grass was green could assemble a sniper rifle. “Do you have the skills, Wheezer, to find out how many female snipers are in the military?”

Wheezer chuckled. “I am flattered that you would think that...and I don’t know...”

“Some things are off-limits, Wheezer,” Wilder said with a cautionary tone. “I don’t need the military getting a red flag they’ve been breached and descending on us.”

Right. True. Grace was desperate.

“And even if I could—which I might—it would take a long time to crack through the number of firewalls and encrypted security. Do you think you might be a sniper in the military?” he asked.

No. She was afraid she was a gun for hire or something equally as terrifying. But the Colombian men didn’t think the doctor was dead. Which meant Grace hadn’t been sent to kill her. Kidnap her? She needed a paper bag to breathe in.

“She put a Barrett M82A1 together in twenty-three seconds, and that was because she was hesitating at first.”

Wilder whistled. “Well done, lady.”

Yeah. She guessed so. “What about Peter Rainey?”

“That’s where things get fun,” Wilder said. “Peter Rainey doesn’t exist. At least no one who matched the photo you sent. We called the rental car company. They weren’t missing any vehicles but when they did a check at our insistence, they did find a tag stolen along with some rental papers. They checked their cameras and sent us footage, but this guy was good. No facial image. Nothing we could even use to ping off. But it’s pretty obvious this Peter Rainey did it.”

Grace’s head might explode. What did this mean?

“Anything else?” Hollis asked.

“We ran a check on the make and model of the car. We found one reported stolen from a used car lot about seventy miles from Cottonwood,” Wilder said.

Peter Rainey stole a car, stole a car tag and papers from a rental place which was pretty smart. If he was pulled over, he’d have the papers to match the license plate and the police would assume it was legit and not a stolen vehicle. “Thanks for all the help.”

“No prob. If you need anything else, we’re a phone call away.”

They hung up and Hollis stared into the wind. He rubbed the stubble on his chin.

After several long beats, Grace couldn’t stand it. Was he thinking the worst too? Would it change the way he felt about her—as a friend that is? Hollis didn’t think of Grace romantically. “I’m going to clean out the storage shed.” She rushed to the side of the building. Hollis didn’t follow. He was thinking the worst. His good friend, sweet Grace who rescued little girls from the woods, quilted with a group of senior ladies, baked cookies with Tish and drank chamomile tea probably blew heads off human beings for cash—if she wasn’t a sniper. But why would Colombians hunt down a military sniper? That made no sense. No... Grace had a sick feeling she wasn’t the good guy at all.

She hauled open the shed door and the smell of river water smacked into her senses. A tiny crack of light pushed its way through the filthy window. As she weaved through the equipment, kayaks, canoes and paddles hanging on the walls, she made her way to the back. She didn’t even know why she told Hollis she was coming to do this. The shed was in order and would never be spotless from dirt and cobwebs. She needed a minute to think. To process the information.

Hollis must have known that—or he was too overwhelmed and unable to find the words to come find her. It was a horrible situation and Grace might be a horrible person. Maybe she was overreacting. But if she’d been in a profession as docile as a kindergarten teacher, she wouldn’t be in Bogota or know how to assemble a rifle. She searched Bogota on her phone. Capital of Colombia. Terrorists! Drugs!