Page 89 of Trusted Instinct
“Creed here. Jeff, tell me about the AI.”
“Our systems were able to extract still photos from Rougarou’s video feed that included front, side, and rear pictures of the men who are fighting. The blonde-haired man is Shane Kirch.” He spelled it out, “Kilo, Igloo, Romeo, Charlie, Hotel. Kirch is married to Brandy Morrison Kirch. He is identified by our systems, using the drone video that Jack captured, as the dell shooter from today’s event.”
“Creed. Copy Kirch is the husband and the shooter.” Creed hadn’t lifted his gaze from his phone with the real-time video from Rou’s collar. Auralia had to be holding Rou in her arms. And she wasn’t running away. Why?
“Jeff. The second man is identified as Kendal Cowan. Charlie, Oscar, Whiskey, Alpha, November. It found three connections to the accident. One, Cowan lives next door to the Kirch residence. Two, the truck that hit Mayor Early’s SUV was abandoned, and witnesses described the driver as someone who had the same coloring and clothing as Kirch. Three, the semi that caused the accident belongs to a resident of that same neighborhood, and it was reported stolen.”
Striker was in their ears. “Striker for Gator and Creed.”
“Mandy and Jeff hold,” Creed said.
Gator pressed his sternal mic. “Go for Gator and Creed.”
“Striker. Get Auralia and Rougarou out of that situation. Brandy’s with her husband. We are relieved of any duty for her well-being. The police will handle the matter from this point forward. I reached out to our FBI friends at Joint Task Force. They’re on a call as we speak, moving agents to Rougarou’s location. The FBI will detain Cowan and Kirch. Your assignment is narrow, Auralia and Rougarou. Over.”
“Gator. Copy. Moving. Out.”
The men didn’t need the shirts for navigation. They raced along the shore until they were at the public boat launch.
There, they crouched in the vegetation to get a good read on the lay of the land and how the situation was playing out.
Rougarou let out a high, bright warning bark, and Creed, with his heart beating so hard it had moved to his throat, closed his eyes and sent pictures of Rou being very still and very quiet.
The men could see two jacked-up pickup trucks nose to nose. The back one had a boat on a trailer. If that had been Shane’s cover for the shooting, it was clever. As long as he actually took his boat out that day, maybe caught a fish or two, he could easily have hiked to the property and climbed up on the roof. Yeah, he could have circled back to get here and hang out, looking like he’d been there having a quiet day.
Gator had swung around so he could keep his attention split between what was happening over by the trucks and what they could see from Rou’s collar cam.
The vehicles were enormous and blocked everything but the heads. Three heads—Brandy, Auralia, and the one with black hair, who had to be Kendal Cowan.
“So you know what I look like,” Kendal said over the video feed.
“Me? No. I don’t have my glasses on; they came off in the water when my car went into the river,” Auralia lied.
Kendal held up three fingers. “How many?”
“Three. I’m not blind. I can see general shapes. Like if I had to describe you. I could say you had a brown shirt, you had face parts—two eyes and a nose. I can’t make out your mouth.”
“What’s wrong with Brandy?”
“She needs a hospital if she’s going to survive. Can you see how blank her face is?”
“Yeah, Brandy looked that way since you rescued her out of the water.”
“You saw that?” Auralia asked. “Tell me how you know Brandy.”
“That’s not important.”
“Do you care about Brandy?” Auralia asked.
“I’m here saving her, aren’t I?”
“Brandy needs medical attention. Shock can be lethal. If you know about the day, then you know that her system might be in overdrive. How about you tell me why she’s in shock, and I can see if I can add anything to what you know.”
“Is Auralia buying time, or is she being a goddamned reporter right now?” Gator muttered under his breath.
“Both,” Creed whispered back. “You go with what you know. That’s her comfort zone.”
Kendal must sense eyes on him; he kept glancing over his shoulder and into the trees. “Let’s see,” he refocused on Auralia, “from the texts I got, her dad surprised them with that story about the second family. And she was freaking out about that. But in the car, her dad said he made it up to add suspects to the FBI's list and get the feds off Shane’s trail. Either way, that shook her up pretty bad. Then there was the shot. She knew about that, so while that might have been a plan—well, I’m a combat vet and when an actual bullet goes winging your way, it's still shocking.”
