Free A Gift of Thought by Sarah Wynde Page A

idea what Andy was talking about. He’d never heard any of those names before. But the tone in Andy’s voice made it clear that it was not good.
    “Maybe, maybe not,” Lucas answered. “One way or another, though, Maia figured this was trouble. And the guy they caught was a Mexican national. She sent him up here and I sat in on the interrogations.”
    “And the guy tagged Chesney?” Andy raised an eyebrow, voice skeptical.
    Lucas rubbed his hand across his forehead, looking tired. “Of course not. That would be too easy.”
    “Not that it would matter. Even if the guy swore on a stack of Bibles and his mother’s grave, no way would anyone believe him.”
    “He didn’t. He didn’t talk. Didn’t say a word.” Lucas looked out the window of the car.
    “Uh-oh,” Andy said. “I’m detecting guilt, my friend. Let me guess—murdered in prison?”
    Lucas shrugged. Dillon tried to see his dad’s face and find out what he was feeling but Lucas had his head turned away, still looking out the window.
    “You didn’t kill him.”
    Lucas rocked his hand back and forth in a gesture of equivocation.
    “You didn’t kill him,” Andy repeated, enunciating each word. “The Zetas killed him. Hell, he was dealing drugs for them. He had to know the risks.”
    “During the interrogation, I caught a name. It was a guy who worked at the Mexican embassy. We arranged surveillance. He spotted it, but not before he’d met with Chesney.” Lucas’s sentences were short and clipped.
    “It’s a long way from a casual meet to selling guns.”
    Lucas shook his head again. “I was there. The conversation was innocuous but the thoughts weren’t.”
    “Ahh,” Andy said. “And he made you?”
    “Not Chesney. But the Mexican, yeah. Enough to be suspicious, anyway.”
    “And you think he put a hit on the dealer because he thought the dealer identified him to us?”
    Lucas shrugged. Dillon sat back in his seat, scowling. He knew his dad did jobs for the government, sometimes dangerous jobs. Lucas had already been shot twice, once in Oregon with Zane and another time somewhere overseas. He’d been home for two whole months the summer Dillon was twelve because of it. But listening to them talk about hits and dealers and cartels made it more real. And scarier.
    “He was a drug dealer, Latimer.”
    “He was twenty-four years old with two kids and a third on the way. Yeah, he screwed up. But he didn’t do anything that deserved a death sentence.”
    “You didn’t kill him,” Andy repeated.
    “No,” Lucas agreed, but he was back to staring out the window.
    “Is that why you’re after Chesney? Guilt?”
    “No.” Lucas shook his head immediately, and then looked at Andy and smiled, a little rueful. “I have easier ways to soothe my guilt. A good immigration lawyer and a trust fund for the kids worked wonders.”
    “Ha. Must be nice.”
    Lucas sobered. “It has its pros.”
    There was a silence. Dillon wondered what his dad was thinking. Andy must have been wondering as well because he shot Lucas a pointed look before prompting, “So, Chesney?”
    “A nice, clear thinker. When he met up with the guy from the embassy, he was trying to figure out if he could offload a bunch of Calico M960s on him.”
    “Huh.” Andy looked intrigued. “Submachine guns? Old, though. They stopped making those in the 90s, right?”
    “Most of Chesney’s money comes from AlecCorp, a private military contractor. They did great in Iraq for the first few years of the war, but by 2008 the money over there was drying up. And then the market crashed. Not everyone recovered. Chesney was rich, but I’m not sure he’s rich anymore.”
    “Dude still has money.”
    “Yeah, but maybe not money like he used to have. Or maybe he panicked when the market tanked and got into something that there’s no way out of. Or he sees it as a profitable line of business and doesn’t care about the human costs. I don’t know what his motives are. But he’s