Page 54 of Close To Death
By the time Kari had reached the back door, a dark SUV was disappearing down the dirt road that ran behind her house, no headlights, just taillights vanishing into the night.
Tribal police vehicles flooded her driveway moments later, officers securing the scene while Kari stood in her destroyed kitchen, breathing hard, processing how close she'd come to dying.
Ben arrived within twenty minutes, taking one look at her house—windows shattered, walls riddled with bullet holes, furniture torn apart—and his expression went dark.
"They knew I'd been briefed," Kari said."Knew I had the evidence."She gestured at her vehicle, where the document case containing copies of Anna's decoded notes sat."They're not playing games anymore.They've moved from intimidation to active assassination."
"Which means we're all targets now," Ben said."You, me, your father, Paul.Anyone who knows about the lithium deposit and the murders."
Kari called Paul while tribal police processed the scene, bringing him and James up to speed.They needed to move faster than planned, needed to get the evidence public before the next attack.
"We go today," Paul said, his voice grim."No more waiting.We compile everything, distribute it to the media and congressional oversight simultaneously, and make it too public to suppress.It's our only chance."
Kari agreed, but she knew the truth: going public might not be enough.Twenty billion dollars bought a lot of protection, a lot of willingness to kill.The conspiracy had been operating for two decades, had murdered seventeen people that they knew of.Exposing it would make them even more dangerous, more desperate.
But what choice did they have?Her mother had died for this truth.Ben had been tortured for it.And tonight, someone had tried to kill Kari to prevent it from being exposed.
They had to fight back.Had to finish what Anna had started.Had to make sure all those deaths meant something.
As dawn arrived, Kari stood in her destroyed home, surrounded by evidence of how close she'd come to joining her mother on that timeline of suspicious deaths.But she was alive.She had the evidence.And she had allies willing to risk everything to expose the conspiracy.
The sun rose over the reservation, painting the desert in shades of gold and red.Beautiful and deadly, like everything in this land.Kari had been born here, had learned here, had become a detective here.And if necessary, she'd die here defending the truth her mother had discovered.
But not without a fight.
Not without making damn sure that everyone knew what Anna had found, what twenty billion dollars had cost in human lives, what a conspiracy had been hiding in plain sight for two decades.
Today, the truth would go public.
In the meantime, Kari loaded extra magazines for her sidearm and waited for whoever might come next.
