05/22/2023 Snippet, THE HUNT.

So, yeah, this isn’t a normal investigation.

I had picked the Garcia house because I was absolutely sure that the target knew the area by now, and that it had been obsessively thinking about this night for the last decade. Mary and I also had to assume that our target knew that there’d be an immediate reaction from the federal government, although we had a potential ace up our sleeve there. It was for certain that we couldn’t count on it making stupid mistakes, although arguably making a break for it when the wind turbine blew would qualify as one. I was trusting my gut when it told me that the target would right away go somewhere indoors that had people, and this was the best prospect.

My gut call looked more like a guess as we parked in the Garcias’ driveway. Nothing looked off; it was a two story wooden house on one side of the extra-wide driveway, with a prefabricated garage on the other. There were two cars and a pickup truck parked on the grass leading up to the garage, all looking fairly new, and the whole place was kept up. “They don’t seem to be hurting for money,” I said to Jimmy as we both got out of our cars.

“They’re not,” Jimmy replied. “Adrian does a bunch of business with Lockheed, over in Johnstown. I don’t know exactly what, but it’s probably industrial. He’s got a machine shop in town. Rafe would totally bring him something that looks like a computer.”

“Got it,” I replied, noting uneasily that Mary had her blank face on.