Choppy Water - Stuart Woods Page 0,46

place the trackers where they can’t be seen by just bending over and looking underneath. Somewhere around the gas tank might work; it’s up to you. They’re marked number one and two, and there is an on-off switch on each. So turn them on; they’ll stay dark until there’s movement.”

“All right.”

“Do you still have your burner phone?”

“I hid it on the hilltop when I tried to call you from there.”

“Here’s another one,” Tom said, handing it to her.

“Okay. Sykes turns on his Wi-Fi a couple of times a day, so if you send me a message, I’ll get it eventually. I like the way you did it the last one; keep being Dad.”

“If there’s an emergency, I’ll use the word ‘may’ in a message, meaning ‘mayday.’ If you get one like that, get out, and do whatever you have to do to protect yourself. You still have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“If you have to think about whether to shoot somebody, shoot him. Thinking time is dangerous. If somebody is a threat, shoot him in the head. You don’t want him to get up and start shooting at you.”

“I wasn’t trained to shoot people in the head,” she said.

“It’s just common sense. You’re still using the .380, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t carry the kind of punch that a .40 or .45 caliber would, so if you have to shoot, shoot to kill.”

She nodded, but she didn’t mean it.

* * *

—

Eugene left the table, got into the van, and went to retrieve his rifle case, which was hidden at a rest stop a mile or so from the turnoff to the compound. He took it back to his room, assembled the rifle, and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m going to do a little shooting,” he said to his roommate.

Eugene went outside and began the climb to his perch on the hilltop. After resting for a couple of minutes, he set down the rifle and began his search for a cell phone. He walked in a circle around the hilltop, widening his path on each circuit, kicking at rocks and other debris as he went, looking into nooks and crannies. He sat down on a boulder and rested again before walking back down the path.

As he got up, he noticed that the boulder was loose. He pushed it over with a foot, and there, dug into the dirt, was a cheap cell phone. Sykes would be pleased.

36

Bess was driving down to Virginia when she passed a liquor store and remembered that Sykes’s bar was out of Knob Creek. They had all been drinking it. She parked, went inside, and bought three bottles of the bourbon.

At the compound she took her suitcase in one hand and the shopping bag from the liquor store in the other and went inside. She left her suitcase on the stairs, then knocked on the door of Sykes’s study. No answer. She knocked again, then went in and left a bottle of Knob Creek on the butler’s tray that he used for a bar, then took the other two into the dining room and put them with the rest of the booze.

“That’s very generous of you,” a voice said from behind her. She turned and saw Sykes standing in the doorway.

“Well,” she said. “I’ve been drinking a lot of it, so I thought I’d return some to the fold.”

“Thank you. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate it.” He beckoned her into the study. “Sit down.”

“I put a bottle with your stock, too,” she said, nodding at the butler’s tray. Then she sat down. “What’s up?”

He set her burner phone on the table between them. “What’s this?”

She picked it up, opened it, tried to turn it on, and failed. “It’s a throwaway cell phone,” she said. “The old-fashioned kind, not a smartphone. Dead.”

“We found it at the top of the hill, where Eugene does his target practice.”

“And . . . ?”

“And, I wondered if it was yours,” he said, his gaze steady.

“No, mine is an iPhone, remember?”

“Maybe we should charge the throwaway.”

“I don’t have a charger for something that old, just for my iPhone.”

“Well, I couldn’t find one in your room. Everybody else has denied ownership of the throwaway. That leaves you.”

“No,” she said. “More likely it leaves one of them who’s lying. The phone is not mine.”

“You mind if we fingerprint you and make comparisons?”

“Go right ahead. You fingerprinted me when I first came here, remember? All you need is a print from the phone.” She was sure she had wiped