All I Want Read online

  Six

  The next afternoon, Parker sat up and got licked from chin to forehead for his efforts. “Thanks, dude.”

  He and Oreo were both on the floor in the shower of the second upstairs bathroom, where Parker was working on fixing the faulty drain. Just like he’d fixed the leak in the kitchen sink the night before. Of course he’d had to wait until the stubborn-as-all-hell Zoe had gone to bed to do so.

  He pulled half a loofah from the drain, shook his head, and started the water. Drained perfectly now. “Done,” he told the dog. Now he and Zoe could each have their own bathroom.

  Not that he particularly needed any privacy. He just felt a little bad for his prickly landlord, who clearly had no idea how to accept help.

  “She’s stubborn as hell,” Wyatt told him when Parker called to check in. “Always has been.”

  No shit, Parker thought.

  “Something she’ll never tell you,” Wyatt said, “is that she’s got some debt. Getting a pilot’s license costs a lot of money and she’s got loans to pay off. Now that I’m doing okay, I’ve tried to pay them off for her but she refuses to let me.”

  Sounded like Zoe.

  “I’ve also tried to help her out with the house,” Wyatt said. “But she always says she’s got it and kicks me out.”

  “She told me the same,” Parker said. “So I waited until she was gone to fix a few things.”

  Wyatt laughed. “Better sleep with one eye open. You’re going to piss her off when she finds out.”

  “Maybe she won’t realize it’s me . . .”

  “She’s ornery, but she’s not stupid,” Wyatt said. “In fact, she’s smarter than all of us put together.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve already got the pissing-her-off part down. I seem to manage that without even trying.”

  “If that were true, you’d be dead and buried already and no one would ever find your body,” Wyatt said.

  Parker laughed.

  “Hey, I’m not kidding. She’s something fierce when her feathers are ruffled, though to be fair to her, she’s always had to be.”

  “Why?” Parker asked. He knew about their parents. They were foreign diplomats who spent most of their time in third-world countries. Growing up, Wyatt and his sisters had done the same.

  “She’ll murder me in my sleep for telling you this,” Wyatt said, “but since you’re living under her nose it might help you understand her. Our parents are great at their jobs but pretty shitty parents. They put it all on Zoe to watch out for us. Or not.”

  “She’s only a year older than you.”

  “Eleven months,” Wyatt said. “But I was clueless back then. She was the only grown-up. Like the time we were supposed to meet up with our parents in Budapest from our various boarding schools, but they got delayed. Zoe was maybe . . . twelve? And there we were, stuck in a strange country where we didn’t speak the language and Americans weren’t looked on all that fondly to say the least, and she still managed to feed us and keep us safe for the three days it took our parents to get to us.”

  Parker was impressed. “She’s tough.”

  “More than you know. I don’t know how many times she held it together under grim circumstances,” Wyatt said. “But I do know I’d be dead a few times over without her.”

  “You’re her family.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just how she’s wired if she cares about you. Trust me, man, when shit’s hitting the fan, there’s no one you’d rather have at your six than Zoe.”

  Parker thought about that conversation long after he’d washed up from the plumbing work and sat at the kitchen table with his laptop studying maps of the Rocky Falls area where Zoe had pointed out Cat’s Paw. Like him, she was a survivor and a caretaker. She’d do anything for her siblings.

  Just as he would for his sister. He sent money back for Amory’s care every month, but he knew the best thing he did for her was stay away.

  After hearing Wyatt talk about Zoe, he couldn’t imagine anything keeping her from being near her siblings. But then again, she didn’t have a job where she chased after bad guys willing to sell their own mother for a buck.

  He tried to concentrate on the map in front of him, but he was good at multitasking and a good portion of his thoughts stayed on Zoe.

  Watching her fly had been a huge turn-on. She’d handled the plane like it had been an extension of herself, and he’d had trouble concentrating on his business when what he’d really wanted to do was join the mile-high club. Never mind that doing so with his pilot would’ve gotten them killed.

  When he’d gone back up with Devon, he’d gotten a better feel for the area. This was more a reflection on the fact that Parker hadn’t wanted to strip Devon naked and lick him from head to toe as he had Zoe.

  He’d saved a lot of time by asking Devon to go directly to Cat’s Paw, where he got a longer look at the vehicles in that mysterious clearing. With his high-powered binoculars, Parker had focused in on several additional fascinating facts. One, he could see two huge blinds, way too big for traditional hunting. More like the size that could be hiding vehicles that someone didn’t want seen.

  This was proven when he watched a tank being driven into one.

  A tank.

  In the woods.

  And then a Humvee, filled with guys armed to the teeth.

  A huge red flag to say the least.

  And two, there’d also been a Humvee four-wheeling through the trees toward some low-lying buildings he’d missed the first time because they’d been as carefully camouflaged as the blinds.

  And then there were the weapons. The kind that weren’t necessarily for hunting animals—at least not the four-legged kind.

  When he’d asked Devon to make a second pass, the pilot had refused, citing two reasons. One, he’d been booked for a direct there-and-back and he didn’t want to tap into his reserve fuel. And two, apparently there were rumors circulating of militia taking over the property and he didn’t want to draw any trouble by bringing attention to himself or the plane.

  Militia.

  Made sense. And if that was the case, Parker hoped like hell that if anyone down there was paying attention to aircraft in the area, they’d missed Zoe earlier.

  Staring at the map now, Parker shook his head. What the hell was going on? He had some ideas and didn’t like any of them. One was a niggling suspicion that he’d had for some time now, that a deal had been struck with Carver for his freedom. Pulling out his phone, Parker called Mick.

  His informant answered with a gruff “What the hell do you want?”

  “Answers,” Parker said.

  There was a pause. “I already gave you a shit-ton more than I should have.”

  “Which wasn’t all that much.”

  “I gave you all I had.”

  “Now see,” Parker said. “I doubt that.”

  “Ah, man, come on,” Mick whined. “You know I can’t talk to you no more if I want to keep breathing.”

  “Tell me enough to catch the Butcher and you have nothing to fear,” Parker countered.

  “Jesus, you’re killing me. Did you go to the Rocky Falls area? Cat’s Paw?”

  “Yes,” Parker said. “And why Cat’s Paw? Only locals know about that place.”

  “Carver grew up there. He’s still got connections.”

  “There’s nothing there,” Parker said. “Except a possible militia hideout.”

  “Yeah, his brother’s militia,” Mick said. “And that asshole’s as mean as Carver.”

  Parker felt his temper stir. “And you left all this out before because . . .?”

  “Because you didn’t ask.”

  “Or because you were trying to fuck up the investigation,” Parker said. “A federal crime, by the way.”

  “No, I wasn’t trying to fuck you up, I swear!”

  “Or maybe you were trying to get me killed.”

  “No! Man, you’re touchy. It’s nothing like that,” Mick rushed to assure him.

  “Then wh