Read Three Minutes to Midnight for Free Online Page A

way, dumbass.” Mahegan was accustomed to hard work and was enjoying using the digger to complete an outer fence around what he guessed was some kind of energy operation, most likely fracking. Mahegan also wanted a workout since he was skipping his daily regimen of swimming and running.
    He needed to be in peak physical condition when he found James Gunther. That was his only focus. His boss, Major General Bob Savage at Fort Bragg, had not texted him a new mission yet. Instead, he’d instructed Mahegan to relax and “stay out of trouble.” The problem was, Mahegan drifted toward “trouble” the way a corporate CEO smelled a deal or a top broker made a risky but rewarding stock purchase. Seeing problems before or as they became trouble was Mahegan’s sixth sense. Ever since he killed his first man, his lizard brain had dominated, transforming him into a one-man justice system, defending and protecting.
    While he would never forgive himself for being too late to rescue his mother, he could still seek justice on her behalf. This operation was the third Gunther and Sons, Inc., construction site at which he had labored, but he had yet to see Gunther or anyone who looked like Junior. Most likely, they sat in their air-conditioned offices while others did their bidding. Problem was, Mahegan would be too noticeable if he walked into an office building in an ill-fitting suit. People would remember him because of his size and his looks: dark blond hair, blue eyes, tan skin, and a six-and-a-half-foot muscular frame. He could do more prying out here, where he was just another American Indian day laborer earning a buck.
    Gunther and Sons’ headquarters was located in Fayetteville, which was a bit too close to home for Mahegan. Wanting to get Mahegan off the grid, three months ago Savage had ordered him to Apex, North Carolina, where the Army was currently renting an above-barn apartment on a three-acre plot of land. So while he waited for his next mission, Mahegan had stayed local, working as a framer on one Gunther and Sons, Inc., office building project in Holly Springs and as an asphalt spreader on a road-paving project in Cary.
    Gunther was the one Mahegan had thrown through the sliding glass door of his home on that horrifying day when he was too late to save his mother. The chunk of glass had cut his back and, Mahegan had heard, nicked a lung. Had the paramedics and the police not arrived when they did, either Gunther would have bled out or Mahegan would have finished him.
    He lifted the posthole digger, opened its jaws, and stabbed it into the ground, creating a hole deep enough for Papa Diablo to emplace a metal pole while Dos poured in ready-mix concrete. It was menial labor, which Mahegan almost liked. His mind worked best when he was doing simple tasks, such as swimming or running.
    As Dos situated the metal pole in the ground, Mahegan scouted his surroundings. He walked to the top of the ridge. He noticed they had made good progress, having reached the northern end of the western ridge. They had been working west and north around the hill that served as the western ridge of the saddle, where Mahegan had seen what he believed to be energy exploration equipment. Giant water tanks lay side by side next to thick, snaking hoses and assorted vehicles. A construction crew had graded a football field of earth. Today he noticed, at the north end of the leveled area, metal parts, like those of an erector set, which would possibly become a rig for drilling a wellhead. In the middle of the field was a hole about five feet across, with a conical, prefab concrete inlay. He was unsure, but it appeared that the wellhead had already been drilled. From his vantage, the hole looked like a giant inverted cone or funnel, narrowing just slightly from about five to four feet. Surrounding the hole was plastic, orange engineer warning tape, staked in the ground with U-shaped pickets.
    A few men milled around in the