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  “Does he really think he’ll find healing by seeking revenge?” Holly still loved him. She would’ve done anything to reach him, but she no longer knew how.

  “It isn’t revenge.” Alex’s mother sounded pensive. “He cares about the bad guys as much as the victims. Before he settled on law enforcement, he even thought about going into counseling. So he could help people change for the better — before they were capable of hurting society.”

  It was as if Alex was trying to become a real life Batman, a person incapable of sustaining relationships in his quest to right all the wrongs in the world. And for some sad reason — even though everyone who loved him could see the futility in his driving determination — Alex couldn’t see it.

  He still couldn’t see it.

  “Holly, you coming out?” Ron’s voice rang out from the dining room on the other side of the house.

  “Almost.” She kept her tone upbeat because she needed this time, these few minutes. If for nothing more than to catch her breath.

  She walked to the full-length window at the far end of her office and gripped the frame on either side. For just a few more minutes she wanted to live there again, in the past, back when she and Alex had all the world figured out, all eternity too. She could feel him beside her, hear the smooth richness of his voice as they walked along the path through Central Park on warm spring evenings. She could smell his cologne, the way it came off better on him than in the bottle and how it mixed with the mint of his favorite gum.

  “I think I found a favorite Bible verse …” he had told her on one of those days. “‘For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.’ That’s gotta be one of the best.”

  Holly had heard it a hundred times before, but in that moment — with all the future stretched out before them — she might as well have been hearing it for the first time. After that, the verse belonged to both of them. Never mind the struggles that faced so many high school kids. They believed with God’s help the two of them could do all things, absolutely anything.

  His faith had been unshakable back then, and hers too. She closed her eyes and tried to hold onto the memory, the way his hand felt around hers, the easy way their steps fell at the same time as they walked side by side. Alex, what happened to us? How did we let it slip away?

  Ron was talking to the other guys, and his loud voice interrupted the moment. The answer was obvious, of course. They didn’t let it slip away. What they shared — the love and laughter, the quiet walks and determined faith — all of it came crashing down right alongside the glass and steel and bodies in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Alex had refused himself the joy of loving and living ever since then.

  She heard Dave asking about her in the other room, and she blinked herself back into the present. Two years ago, seeing Alex’s picture in the paper might’ve prompted her to find him again, call him, and at least reminisce about the beautiful days they’d left behind. But the eyes in the picture on the front page confirmed what she had only guessed before today. That there was no point ever contacting Alex again for one simple reason:

  The Alex Brady she had known and loved no longer existed.

  SIX

  Alex liked driving the Los Angeles freeways, whatever the gas prices. He didn’t spend money on much else, so he could afford to drive. Besides, he wouldn’t have traded his truck for anything. He drove a black Dodge Ram mega cab with a HEMI V – 8 — the kind of ride any environmentalist would hate, not that Alex would do anything about that. The truck was perfect for him — enough height to see over the LA traffic, power to go off-roading after work, and plenty of room for Bo in the back.

  Still, Alex never once drove the truck to headquarters in Monterey Park. The last thing he wanted was for the bad guys to mark his Dodge and make him a target in his off-hours. Everyone knew the K9 deputies were headquartered at Monterey Park. So he did what a lot of deputies did. He parked his squad car at the Lost Hills station, eight miles from his condo. Every day he and Bo would get in his Dodge and drive to Lost Hills, where Alex would change into his uniform and share a few words with the local guys. The added driving was a good thing, more time to think about the calls behind him, the day ahead.

  From Lost Hills, he and Bo would take his specially outfitted K9 squad car into headquarters. There was another benefit. If he saw someone suspicious, he might find a stolen car or a person with a warrant. The freeways belonged to the Highway Patrol, but if he caught someone tailgating or speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, or driving with expired plates, and if Alex had a suspicious feeling about the driver, he could run the plates. If the check turned up any sort of warrant, he could make a stop. He would leave Bo in the backseat with the air conditioning on, and quickly get to the heart of the matter.

  He was halfway to headquarters, merging onto I – 10 east when he spotted an older model Cadillac, deep orange and low to the ground. The car looked familiar. It took him a minute, but then he remembered. He’d seen it parked out front of an East LA drug bust a few weeks ago. Alex stayed with the car and after a quarter mile, he was convinced the driver was under the influence of something. He ran the plates and sure enough — the driver was wanted on a drug charge. He radioed in that he was pulling over a possible suspect and that he needed a CHP officer backup.

  At first it looked like the driver of the Cadillac might gun it. But then the car swerved to the side of the road, and the driver slammed on his brakes. Alex pulled up behind him and left Bo in the car. The smell of alcohol hit him before he reached the guy’s window. He was asking a few preliminary questions when, there on the floor, he saw a Ziploc bag of what looked like cocaine.

  Alex radioed in the find, and in a few minutes two CHP cars pulled up behind his squad car. Half an hour later, the orange Cadillac had been impounded and the suspect was being hauled off — caught driving drunk and in possession of coke. Another drug dealer on his way to being locked up, and all before his shift even began.

  It was the kind of morning that would’ve made Alex’s father proud.

  All told, Alex worked four overtime hours before his regular shift taking Bo through a couple of Compton area high schools and conducting three interviews at headquarters with TV reporters trying to learn more about the award he had earned. Alex didn’t mind reporters. Any positive print was a good thing for K9 officers, helping the public understand the dogs and their high degree of training. More knowledge meant less fear and more public approval — all of which equated to the financial support the department needed to continue growing its K9 division.

  His real shift started at four that afternoon, and for a while things picked up. A few drug arrests and a backup call on an unarmed suspect chase, one that ended with an arrest. But the late hours were unusually quiet. At midnight Alex checked out, and he and Bo headed back to the Lost Hills station.

  Traffic was light, and after Alex made the transition north on the Ventura Freeway, he glanced over his shoulder. “You okay, Bo?”

  The dog gave a single, sharp bark and moved about on his backseat.

  “That’s my dog. Good boy, Bo.”

  Alex kept his eyes on the surrounding lanes. No lawbreakers in this crowd, not that he could tell, anyway. He was sailing toward the San Fernando Valley when he clicked on his iPhone, glanced at the page of recent numbers, and felt the familiar thrill as he saw a missed call that read REA. He’d been waiting three days for this call.

  He tapped the entry, and on the other end the phone began to ring. A quiet voice answered almost immediately. “Owl, here. Danny, this you?”

  “The one and only.” Alex rolled his window up tightly so he could hear every word. “Did you get the information?”

  “I need a code, man. You know the routine.” The man spoke in fast, jerky sentences. As if someone was holding a gun to his head.

  “Green Night.” Alex felt his body tense up. “Now tell me about the meeting.”

  “It’s next week. Third Wednesday of August. The boss say
s we have to avoid headquarters for now. Thinks we’re being watched.” He laughed, but again it sounded strained, like he was high or something. “We’re looking hard at OCE, did I tell you that?”

  “You did.” Alex swallowed, containing his fury, controlling it. “I’ve got the matches. Just tell me where and when.”

  “Go to the meeting. Nine o’clock at Chumash Park. First picnic table off the parking lot.” He cleared his throat. “Gotta go.”

  Alex wanted more. “You got other ideas, Owl, or just OCE?”

  “Too many questions. Don’t miss the meeting.” There was a click and then silence.

  He cursed under his breath and tapped the End Call bar. His communication with someone deep in the organization at the REA had started two weeks ago. On his day off, Alex had pulled an overtime shift at the men’s jail — something he was always looking for. The work gave Bo a day of downtime at home, and it helped Alex keep his ear to the ground. Pretty much the whole day was spent talking with other deputies, gleaning information about new gangs or wanted felons.

  But that shift, Alex hung around a nineteen-year-old custody assistant, a skinny kid with dreams of being a deputy. The kid had a lot to say about one of his inmates — a guy who identified himself as a member of the REA. Apparently, the inmate had been talking, spilling his guts on everything the group was about. Alex wasn’t surprised. One of the commonalities of ecoterrorists was that they were openly unrepentant for their actions. The more militant members saw themselves as righteous soldiers in a cause to save the earth, and often they didn’t mind talking about their ideas.

  “I listened.” The custody assistant lowered his voice. They were sitting at a desk, but he clearly didn’t want any of the inmates to hear him. “I think the con thought I was on his side, ready to sign up.”

  “I have a feeling you won’t be a C.A. for long,” Alex’s heart beat faster. He hoped the compliment would make the kid talk. “So tell me about it … what did the guy say?”

  When the C.A. realized Alex’s interest in the inmate, the kid shared everything he knew. Probably trying to impress Alex. When he left that day, Alex had a phone number and a code word — Green Night. He didn’t expect much to come from the tip. He doubted it was even valid. But that afternoon he made the call and had his first brief conversation with Owl, as the REA guy called himself. After their second conversation, Alex was convinced the tip was legitimate. He told Owl his name was Danny, and he explained that he had a compelling desire to join REA. “I hate watching people rip through the world’s resources like they’re never going to run out,” he told Owl.

  Whatever else he said, Alex must’ve been convincing. Owl started talking, and before long he mentioned the Oak Canyon Estates. The information about the OCE had slipped, as far as Alex could tell. But it confirmed what Alex had feared all along.

  The custom home development was next on the list for the environmental terrorists. Alex set his phone down on the console and stared at the empty stretch of freeway ahead of him. He reached back and scratched Bo’s ear. “We’re gonna get ‘em, right, Bo?”

  The dog whined his approval and nuzzled Alex’s hand.

  “You tell ‘em. No one sets a fire on our shift.” Alex sped up.

  Environmental terrorists were not your typical street thugs, and they defied the definition of any other gang. They were educated and articulate, with an average income close to six figures. REA members didn’t wear turbans or bandanas or heavy chains. They didn’t shave their heads or tattoo their gang insignia on their arms. Instead, they drove hybrid or electric cars, rode their bikes to work, and kept mulch piles in their backyards. They shopped at Whole Foods, recycled everything from cereal boxes to plastic wrap, and wouldn’t touch an apple unless it was organic. By day they held jobs at banks and advertising firms, tech corporations and telecommunication companies.

  In other words, in a city like Los Angeles, they were absolutely mainstream, their agendas invisible and insidious. Most of them had started out as environmentalists, honorable people intent on being responsible and teaching responsibility in regards to the world’s resources. Something everyone should be mindful of. But the members of the REA had allowed their devotion to the planet to become an obsession. A sick obsession.

  Alex tried to picture the group meeting in clandestine locations, plotting the destruction of millions of dollars of other people’s property and possessions. Not even concerned for the human life that might get in the way. He felt the familiar pain, the fact that he’d been unable to stop the al Qaeda terrorists from killing his father. But he could stop these terrorists. His father’s memory was worth that much.

  That anyone could be so crazed as to think that torching SUV’s and burning down custom homes could ever help the environment. The idea was ludicrous. Alex tried to imagine what would happen if the members of the REA waited until a stiff Santa Ana wind and then set fire to a development like the one at Oak Canyon Estates. The mountains surrounding Las Virgenes Canyon would explode into flames, and, yes, lives could be lost.

  Firefighters and civilians. Alex shuddered to think just how many.

  Once he was in his own truck, he didn’t head south the way he would’ve if he were going home. Instead, he took the freeway a couple exits the other direction and turned off at Lindero Canyon Road. He knew where the REA headquarters were, another tip from the custody assistant. Alex had been up here three times already, and again the tip checked out. The house was definitely a meeting place for the group.

  Of course, Alex had tried to pass the information along to his sergeant, but the man wasn’t interested. “We can only apply the law where people have broken it, Brady,” the man told him. He was older and strictly by the book. “There’s plenty of law breakers out there to keep you busy.”

  That’s why Alex had tried to explain the information to Clay and Joe at dinner last weekend. Clay was overseeing the department’s efforts against the REA, and Alex had a feeling Clay already knew the whereabouts of the group’s headquarters.

  But then why weren’t they working harder to find enough evidence to make the arrests?

  Alex had seen Clay and Joe in the break room at the Monterey Park headquarters every day since their barbecue last weekend, but the couple times he’d tried to bring up the REA, he’d been shot down.

  “Don’t get hung up on this thing,” Clay finally told him.

  “Do we have to wait for a fire?” Alex had to control his tone. “Is that what this is about?”

  “You know the drill, Brady. We have to wait for a threat, at least. Like I said, they’re on our radar.”

  Alex’s patience on the matter was wearing thin.

  He worked his truck up Lindero to the place where it veered to the right. The house he’d been watching was at the top of a winding gravel road, well into the brittle brush and dry grass that made up the Southern California hillsides. This was Alex’s fourth visit up here, and each time he wondered why a group of fire starters would make their headquarters in a house that stood right in the path of fire danger.

  Maybe the REA didn’t care if their headquarters burned down. Less evidence that way. Alex felt his determination double. There weren’t enough days in a lifetime to round up all the terrorists who would ever threaten the United States, but Alex would spend his life locking up the ones he could. And that included the members of the REA. He turned off his lights, same as last week, and took his truck off-road to a spot behind a covering of ten-foot-high wild shrubs. The kind of ground cover that made this fire season so volatile.

  From behind the brush, he could still see through a small clearing. He angled himself so he could scratch Bo’s ears with one hand while he held the pair of high-powered binoculars in the other. His heart reacted to what he was looking at. They were meeting tonight, same as last week. Wednesday night, well after midnight. Last week Alex happened to call at this time and hear voices in the background. Instinct told him he’d hit upon the group’s secret meeting time, an
d sure enough, here they were.

  He scanned the bumpers of the seven cars parked in front of the house. All of them had removed their license plates for the gathering — same as last week. Alex figured they probably stopped at separate spots on their way up, removed their plates, and didn’t put them on again until they were headed back down the hill. He leaned against the headrest. This was a smart group, no question. They left no trail, donned none of the usual environmental bumper stickers. They were middle- and upper-class crazies who masqueraded as businessmen by day, terrorists by night.

  He pulled out his phone again and clicked his way to the section of YouTube clips stored there. He’d bookmarked a dozen news videos about last year’s brush fires later deemed to have been deliberately set, and now he called up one of the worst — a canyon fire started last year at a development in San Diego. Alex turned the volume down so Bo wouldn’t wake up, and he let the clip play.

  “Police believe the environmental terrorist group REA is responsible for the loss late last night of four model homes at a north San Diego hillside development,” the announcer stated. The visual switched from the reporter to a wall of flames tearing through a series of homes. “Thankfully, the homes were empty at the time of the attack. A white flag was left in the front yard of one of the homes with spray-painted green letters that read REA.” The shot switched to the jagged edges of a homemade flag fluttering in front of a raging inferno. The camera view changed again, and the screen showed four fire trucks on a dirt road with flames ten stories high on either side. “Firefighters narrowly escaped being caught in the ensuing brush fire,” the announcer continued. Alex slid his finger across the video’s progress line and watched that part again, and then a third time.

  That must’ve been what it was like for his dad and the other emergency workers, trying to rescue people forty, sixty, eighty floors up in a building exploding with flames. He lifted his binoculars and stared at the tops of the few heads he could make out. If he’d had this type of bead on the al Qaeda terrorists before September 11, he would’ve called for the entire department to back him up, and together they would’ve brought down the group before a single plane could be hijacked. He felt the satisfaction of the imaginary scenario.