Free The Collective by Jack Rogan Page B

interrupt their stakeout?” Jane asked.
    Cait paused in the door frame, arching an eyebrow. “Stakeout? Next thing I know you’ll be talking about skel informants and righteous shootings. They’re in your neighborhood and not exactly hiding. You have a right to know what they’re doing. This is America, remember?”
    Jane’s smile was halfhearted. “Sometimes I forget.”
    Cait didn’t reply. They tried to avoid talking politics in the Wadlow house. George was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, but Jane had turned her back on the party the moment the Patriot Act had been passed. Cait stayed out of it; she didn’t much care who sat in the Oval Office. She had seen the faces of Iraqis up close, seen them laugh and seen them die, and they were just like anybody else—forged by the world they lived in. The Muslims who wanted to live in peace were no danger to America, and those who were willing to die if it meant taking American lives … well, they couldn’t be stopped. As far as Cait was concerned, the best thing to do was just stay away from them. But that was why she had been a soldier, not a politician, and now she could only hope to never return to the Middle East.
    Still barefoot, she went out onto the front steps and immediately spotted a silver Audi parked three doors down and across the street. At a quarter after seven on a Sunday morning, the neighborhood had a wonderful stillness about it. A door opened to her left and she glanced over to see a young bearded guy step out, shirtless, to retrieve his newspaper from the stoop. Other than that, the street was quiet.
    She wasn’t surprised Jane had thought the car out of place. The street consisted of small Colonials and ranches built inthe 1940s and ’50s. Any one of their driveways would have had room for another vehicle to park, including the absent DiMarinos’.
    From a distance, and given the Audi’s tinted windows, it was impossible to tell if the car was occupied.
    Well, there’s one way to find out
.
    She padded down the steps and across the front yard, enjoying the feeling of the grass under her bare feet. Once she hit the sidewalk, she stayed on her aunt’s side of the street, not ignoring the presence of the car but not paying it any special attention, either. As she walked, she turned the whole situation over in her brain. The Audi sparkled in the morning sun. Really, it was too nice a car for undercover cops to be driving. Government, maybe, but what the hell would federal agents be doing in Medford? So maybe they were cops after all. On the other hand, some romantic entanglement—a cheating spouse, maybe—could easily put a private detective into play. She didn’t know any private investigators, but doubted they could afford such a car.
    A mystery, right here on Badger Road.
    As she came abreast of the Audi, Cait stepped off the curb and strode toward the driver’s side, the pavement warm underfoot. She put on her friendliest, most quizzical smile, thinking she would just rap on the window. Behind the tinted glass, she could vaguely make out the shapes of the driver and another man. But the engine growled abruptly to life, then softened to a purr as the driver threw the car into gear and pulled away, leaving her standing in the middle of the road, staring after it.
    “Fine, be that way!” she called after the Audi, making note of the plate number and wondering if she really had just screwed up somebody’s surveillance and, if so, who they might be surveilling. Was that even a word? She thought it must be.
    As she headed back to her aunt and uncle’s house, intending to write down the license plate number, an awful thought occurred to her. What if it wasn’t something as simple as a cheating spouse? She had thought it might be a government vehicle. What if they suspected someone on the street of beinginvolved in terrorism, or if one of the neighbors was a serial killer or something?
    Despite the warmth of the August morning, Cait