Far Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

night-vision binoculars to his face.
    “What do we got?”
    “A coyote moved across the highway ’bout an hour ago,” Torres said.
    “You call it in?”
    “CBP took it.”
    Jon glanced at him. “You in your truck?”
    “Nah, Whitfield dropped me off.”
    Jon settled himself against the cold, hard dirt. He peered through the binocs and did a slow 180-degree scan east to west. It was flat country, only a low ridge running north-south to break up the landscape. The ridge would have been a better vantage point, but it was too obvious. Hardin had trained at Fort Benning. He would have spotted it in a minute.
    Overnight surveillance of the ranch had been a priority ever since the eavesdropping crew had picked up a snippet from an outdoor conversation: meeting us . . . oh-two-hundred hours . They’d had a team stationed out here for the past three nights, but no one had entered or left the property, and Jon was convinced they’d missed something.
    Still, he scoured the landscape for anyone coming or going. He listened for the crunch of footsteps or the low hum of an approaching engine. He listened for coyotes—either the furry or the human variety. He listened for rattlesnakes. This land was inhabited by things that would bite, sting, and stab—not to mention shoot—when threatened. Hardin had a sign hooked to the game fence that surrounded his land: NO TRESPASSING. WE DON’T CALL 911.
    Torres rolled onto his back. He untwisted the lid from his thermos, and the aroma of hot cocoa wafted over. Most agents on surveillance downed coffee by the gallon. Torres was a Swiss Miss addict.
    “Thought you were coming back yesterday.”
    Jon lowered the binocs. “Got tied up.”
    “How was the office?”
    “Same. Jane says hi.”
    A flash of white teeth in the darkness. “No kidding?”
    This assignment had been a dry spell in more ways than one, and Jon knew Torres was ready to be done with it. Jon wasn’t so eager. In the four months since he’d come out here, his work had slowly turned into an obsession. Eight years with the Bureau, and Jon had never had a case grab hold of him like this one. After months of undercover work, after countless hours of painstaking digging, he was long on theories and short on evidence. Coincidence after coincidence had piled up, but he couldn’t find a way to fit everything into a coherent picture.
    He checked his watch again. Twenty more minutes.
    “How’d it go in Austin?” Torres asked.
    “Fine.”
    “So what’s her story?”
    Jon thought of Andrea Finch outside her apartment, her face slick with rain and sweat, her T-shirt plastered to her body.
    “She said it was personal, not business.”
    Torres grunted. “Yeah, right.”
    “Said she has a history with Hardin.”
    “I don’t buy it. She took what, three days off work? To come out here? I bet money she’s on some kind of task force. DEA’s fucking with us again, I’m telling you.”
    “She didn’t take off,” Jon said. “She’s on the beach.”
    “She’s what?”
    “Suspended. Administrative leave, pending an investigation. She was in an officer-involved shooting. An eighteen-year-old died.”
    “No shit, she killed a kid?”
    Jon pictured her face again. He wondered whether the shooting was the reason for that edgy look in her eyes. Or maybe she always looked that way.
    “What’s the verdict with Maxwell?” Torres asked. “He in or out?”
    Jon peered through the binocs again and thought about their boss in San Antonio, who’d never really been on board with this operation. “We’ve got one more week. If we don’t have a warrant in hand by that point, he wants to pull the plug.”
    Torres muttered a curse.
    “Said we’re needed on the Saledo case.”
    “We’ve already got ten agents staffed to that thing.”
    Jon shifted his gaze to the ridge, and his attention caught on a faint green glow behind some scrub trees. He adjusted the lenses. “What time’d you get here?” he asked