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An hour later, he sat back and stretched, bending his head from side to side. His list looked good. First order of business would start the next morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Lesley’s phone rang. She jumped a little at the noise, having lost herself in random thoughts. She grabbed the receiver.
“You need to come by the office right now,” her brother said.
Her shoulders sagged. “What’s up?”
“Things have come up. Just get here.”
She quickly locked her screen and scribbled a note to leave on her keyboard.
“Stina,” she said, rounding the corner to her friend’s cubicle.
Stina nodded. “Everything okay?”
“Dunno. That was Oli. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
“I’ll cover for you.”
On her way out, she stopped by a set of lockers outside the gate and grabbed her phone, hoping that there would be a message waiting for her. No such luck. It’d been almost a full day since she texted him, and he was silent.
Five minutes later, she rapped on the door jamb of Oliver’s office and stepped around the corner. He was leaning forward, talking intently to the man in the chair facing him. Antony.
“Les, come sit,” he said, waving his hand at another chair. “We’re waiting for the Sergeant Ma—speaking of,” he trailed off as the man came in and took a seat off to the side.
Antony kept his face blank, and he avoided Lesley’s gaze.
Her heart, fluttering madly when she first walked in, had settled into a dull, painful throb. She’d waited too long. It was over.
“Border Patrol found Specialist Smith,” Antony said. “Dead in the desert, about half a mile from the border. They had executed him. Medical examiner said it would be hard to tell with the condition of his remains, but it probably happened not long after he went missing.”
“Sonofabitch. Cartel?” The Sergeant Major asked, sagging in his chair.
“No,” Antony answered. “Ballistics came back to a weapon reported as stolen a few years ago, from the arms room.”
“Wait, my arms room?”
Antony shook his head. “No, sorry. The MP arms room. There was an incident off post, a Soldier threatening his family with a firearm. The local police took him and the weapon into custody. Both were transferred to us, but the weapon never made it into the arms room. Looks like we had a dirty agent who seems to have faked the paperwork. He entered it into the system, but the weapon was never physically there.” He took a breath. “Worse still, the charges were fabricated. That troop never threatened anyone.”
Once they’d gotten Bower to talk, he spilled like a dam with the floodgates open. They were trying to find the Soldier who’d lost his career over all of this to make things right. The kid was going to be in for some back pay and a record expunging once everything was said and done.
“So, who murdered Smith?” asked Oliver.
“We don’t know who pulled the trigger,” Antony said. He turned toward Lesley. “But the bartender who drugged you and Charlie was there. Specialist Rankin saw him and Thompson pushing Smith down the walk the night he disappeared.”
Lesley nodded. That explained why Rankin had looked like hell a few weeks ago. She’d have to check in with her.
“Wait, Thompson is involved?” Sergeant Major Waters spat out. Antony felt for the man. His day was getting longer and longer the more he heard.
“He is.” Antony checked his phone. “He’s been taken into custody, as of five minutes ago. Without incident, and without anyone seeing. That should get you some time to figure out how you’re going to break the news to your unit.”
“Small help, but thanks.”
Oliver was spinning his pen over his thumb and frowning. “How did this all start?”
“Turns out, it’s a family business of sorts. Thompson is Fry’s, the bartender at the Warehouse, stepbrother. Fry is the cousin of one Jensen Bower, who was an agent here during the first investigation. “
