Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,11
“Mom, I’ve got to go. Something’s just come up. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can reschedule, okay?”
She hung up her phone and followed the Ranger east.
* * *
WHOEVER WAS DRIVING the black Jeep Wrangler behind Sutton was pretty good at tailing. If he weren’t already on high alert and well trained, Sutton might not have spotted the vehicle keeping track of him. He’d noticed the Jeep as he entered the Smoky Mountains National Park. It stayed a couple of vehicles behind him, never getting too close. But the Jeep never let him get too far ahead, either.
Hell, maybe he ought to just pull off at the next scenic overlook and see what happened.
A glance at the truck’s dashboard clock killed that idea. He was already cutting it close. Clingmans Dome was over an hour’s drive from Bitterwood, and if the gathering clouds lowering over the mountains were anything to go by, a storm was brewing. Rain would slow him down. And even if he arrived with time to spare, there was the climb to the observation deck, possibly in the pouring rain.
The fifty-four-foot-tall concrete tower ending in a saucer-shaped deck stood at the summit of Tennessee’s highest elevation. To get there, a visitor generally made a steep half-mile trek up a paved road. Sutton had hiked that road more than once during his boyhood, usually as part of a class trip or as the guest of another boy whose father, unlike Cleve Calhoun, wasn’t allergic to a little exertion.
He hadn’t been there in years, but he found the twisting mountain roads leading to the Clingmans Dome Trail familiar. The mountain straddled the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina, right in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. Some of the roads seemed to fold in on themselves as they tunneled through the mountains and curved around rocky outcroppings, making for a hair-raising drive.
Why Clingmans Dome? he wondered yet again as he kept one eye on the winding road and the other on the Jeep behind him. Why tonight at seven, with the setting sun being quickly swallowed by dark rain clouds and temperatures dropping to twenty degrees colder than in the valleys below?
He’d known, as a native of these hills, to bring warm, weather-resistant clothes, for even in the summer, evenings in the Smoky Mountains could be uncomfortably cool and wet. Up on Clingmans Dome, over a mile above sea level, the temperature could dip near freezing on an early September night, and the whole area was a coniferous rain forest, which meant getting wet was always a strong possibility.
It was an odd spot for a mysterious rendezvous, and his decision to comply with the note hadn’t been made lightly. Following protocol, he’d called Jesse Cooper to tell him about the mysterious message. Cooper had wanted to send backup, but Sutton had talked his boss out of the idea. The note had said to come alone, and if his combination of Special Forces training and Cooper Security refreshers had prepared him for anything, it was to face dangers on his own if necessary.
Of course, if the Jeep trailing doggedly behind him kept up the tail, he wouldn’t be going alone after all.
He knew it was possible, perhaps even likely, that he was driving toward an ambush. He’d prepared for that possibility, from wearing a GPS tracker that Jesse Cooper was even now monitoring from his office in Maybridge, Alabama, to strapping on an extra pistol—a SIG Sauer P238 in an ankle holster on his right leg in addition to his Glock, currently nestled snugly in a holster under his leather jacket.
And there were other ways to hike to the top of Clingmans Dome besides the tourist trail.
* * *
SOMEWHERE SOUTHEAST OF Gatlinburg, heading east on Highway 441, Ivy made a rookie mistake. She let an 18-wheeler pass her on a downhill straightaway and ended up stuck behind the behemoth as it groaned its way up a steep grade, putting her farther and farther behind Sutton’s Ford Ranger. By the time they came across another safe area to pass and she whipped the Jeep around the lumbering truck, she’d lost sight of Sutton’s vehicle completely.
“Damn it!” she growled, banging her hand on the steering wheel in frustration. Her decision to follow Sutton this far out of Bitterwood was already looking like complete idiocy, and now she’d botched even that. She was almost an hour away from home, with gritty eyes wanting to slam shut, and she was the worst cop