Page 29 of Under Fire in Big Sky

“I was reminding the cowboy to cooperate,” she said, and Eli frowned at her.

Trujillo knocked on the door. He gave it a few seconds and banged louder the second time.

Rustling came from the other side. “Who is it?” a groggy male voice asked.

“FBI.” Trujillo held his badge up to the peephole. “Open up.”

The security chain slid to the side and the door opened. Yawning, a man stood in a T-shirt, boxers, and a loosely tied bathrobe. “What’s this about?”

Trujillo kept his badge raised. “George Maben?”

“Yes.”

Most of Olivia’s lingering questions centered on NDR. The Aegis analysts couldn’t dig up any new information about the group. Maben was a natural place to start.

Trujillo introduced them. “We have some questions for you. May we come inside?”

“Got a warrant?” Maben asked.

“You have two choices,” Trujillo said. “The easy way. You let us in. We have a conversation and see how it goes. Or the hard way. I get a warrant in an hour, handcuff you in front of your neighbors, haul you to the station, hold you until I’m ready to ask questions, which might be sometime after dinner, or late breakfast tomorrow. Then we have the same conversation and see how it goes.”

Groaning, Maben stepped aside. After he let them in, he shut the door and plodded into the kitchen. “Mind if I have a beer?”

“It’s only nine in the morning,” Trujillo said. “A little early for a drink, don’t you think?”

Scratching his thinning white hair, Maben opened the fridge and pulled out a can of beer. “Listen, man, I got off a twelve-hour shift at six and just got to sleep when you started banging on my door.” He sipped his drink. “Your morning is my night. Let’s get this over with. It’s not my first rodeo. I know how it works.”

“You were at work from six p.m. yesterday evening until six this morning?” Trujillo asked, and Maben nodded. “Where’s that?”

“Town Pump. I’m store clerk. I was the only one on shift, but there are cameras and surveillance to prove I was there.”

Trujillo wrote it down in a notepad he’d pulled from his pocket. “Walk me through the hours before you went to work.”

“Got off my last shift at the same time. Six. Home by six thirty. Watched the news. Went to bed around nine. Slept alone. I was up by four. Yesterday was um, Wednesday, so I went swimming at the senior center on Main Street. I checked in at the front desk. Cameras cover the entrance and the exits. Afterward, I ate at the diner across the street and walked to work.”

“Nice alibi,” Trujillo said.

Olivia agreed. It was neat. Well prepared. Easy to verify. Either Maben wanted to be ready for this interview, or it was simply as he already admitted—this wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew it was probably a matter of time before someone came around asking questions.

“Alibi for what?” Maben asked.

“Last night, the New Dawn Revolution conducted an orchestrated attack at the Rising Rock Resort over in the Rising Rock Valley. Know anything about that?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t know anything about the fires your organization set at the hotel?” Trujillo gave the older man a skeptical look. “I find that hard to believe.”

Maben shrugged. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Any idea why they did it?” Trujillo asked.

“Nope.”

“For the leader of NDR, it’s odd you know so little,” Trujillo said. “Maybe we need to go to the station. You’re still on probation, aren’t you? It wouldn’t take much to send you back to prison.”

“I’m not going back.” Maben set his beer down. “I no longer have any ties with NDR. Can’t. It would violate my probation. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

All of that was in Maben’s file Olivia read. None of it meant he didn’t stay in contact with the group.