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.If he comes at you again, it’ll give Keith something to do.You know how he loves to play Mr.In-Between.”Jimmy nodded.“Shoulda been a Lutheran minister, like his dad.”“Yeah,” Gator said.“Plus, Keith’s having a bad winter, since he had to put out that ordinance keeping trucks and sleds off the lake ’cause it didn’t completely freeze over.”“Might cost him the election,” Jimmy nodded.“Yeah,” Gator said, “needs something to do, so maybe if it gets going back and forth between you and Broker, Keith’ll check him out, and it’ll get back to us who he is.Worth a try.”“Uh-huh.So just little stuff,” Jimmy said, more confident now.“Yeah, but he’ll be pissed.He might come at you.Hell, we want him to.Can you handle that?”“Sure, Gator.” Jimmy squared his thick shoulders.“Woulda nailed his ass today except I slipped on the ice.”“I hear you.So, tomorrow morning,” Gator said.“Piece of cake.People always leave the containers out back-asswards so they flip off the claw,” Jimmy said.“Good.” Gator smiled, pleased with the way he set it in motion, giving orders sort of low-key.Like a good boss should.To underscore the point, he slapped Jimmy on the shoulder, comradelike.“Can’t really tell you all of it, but I got a feeling we’re getting close, huh.”“I’m for that,” Jimmy said.“Okay.I gotta go,” Gator said.Cassie walked him to the door.“You know what you’re doing,” she said happily.Not a question, eyes merry with the meth she’d eaten.This raspberry flush spreading up from the top of her tube top, creeping up to her collarbones, the smooth shoulders…“Just don’t smoke it, go easy,” he cautioned, pulling his eyes away.Going out the door.He sat in the truck waiting on the heater for a few minutes, watching the lights in the house.Maybe they wouldn’t bicker about money tonight.Maybe Cassie would take his big ass to bed, shut her eyes, and pretend he was somebody else.Satisfied, he put the truck in gear and started down the drive.Musing.Some crew he had.His desperate cash-strapped lush of a brother-in-law and his not quite reformed nympho meth-addled sister.Plus Sheryl, his biker groupie turned waitress.Thing was, his plan was so good, not even this bunch of screw-ups could mess it up.He had to believe that.Half an hour later he came up on the crossroads and took the turn on Z, turned off his lights again, and coasted up to the empty farmhouse.This time he got out and walked close enough to hear rap music banging on the faint breeze.Lights swirling in the windows.Must have a battery CD player.Little rave going in there; good, keep it up.He turned and walked back to his truck.One of these days, he’d be back.Chapter FourteenBroker started in the garage.No tiny paw prints led from the garage back door; a dusting of new snow where Kit had shoveled was unmarked.Then he got lucky.Kit had not been super-conscientious about her cleaning along the edge of the deck.He set down the bowl of cat food and studied the pattern of imprints filled in with fresh snow, spaced like footsteps next to the rail.Way to go, Kit.Okay.Broker exhaled, went down a level.Someone had been here, had slipped over the rail.It took a few minutes peering over the flashlight, but Broker saw enough to get a gut check on how the night visitor had entered and exited the yard.Came in serpentine, stepping in existing tracks.No new cleat marks, only the pattern of Kit’s Sorels and Broker’s Eccos along with the prints of their ski boots.But even filling in with fresh snow, Broker could see that those prints were mashed out where the intruder had stepped, widened.Like the newer tracks off the deck.Uh-huh.So you tied cloth on your boots to mask your tracks.It took another ten minutes to follow the tracks through the edge of the woods.They led to the connecting path to the state ski trail.Where they vanished.More stooping, more studying impressions in the snow.The path appeared undisturbed since their afternoon ski run.Just the wide-angled splay of Kit’s skis next to Broker’s parallel tracks.But the parallel tracks were cleaner, the snow firmed by pressure.Broker thought back to all the skiers on the trail this afternoon.Okay, so you’re smart.You came in on skis, stayed in the tracks I made earlier today.Stepped out of the bindings, slipped some kind of wrap on his boots.Went in, came out, took off the wrap, and stepped back into the skis.Turned the skis around without disturbing the tracks.Not some casual vandal.You put effort and planning into this.He straightened up, turned off the flashlight, and shook out his senses.He smelled the faint camphor of pine and frozen resin.Felt the invisible wall of cold up close.Almost silent now.Just the wind shifting through the pine needles; here and there dry dead branches rattled.Hazy moonlight sifted down through the tall old red and white pines and traced northern European shadows on the snow, bent and twisted together like stained-glass patterns.Could see where the Gothic cathedrals got their start, in among trees like this.The trail beckoned, a curving band of open white.At home in the woods, aren’t you.Confident.Broker had made a life of high-wire work, shifting his balancing act between caution and impulse.Going with his gut.With mood.At the moment he was still mainly curious; so he walked slowly up the trail.Each step brought him closer to a bad feeling, so he instinctively tempered his curiosity with caution.Somebody this tricky could still be out here.He slipped off the trail into the trees.Focused now, ignoring the raw cold.Took three slow, silent steps, stopped, and listened.Then repeated the pattern.An Australian sergeant had taught the still-hunting routine to Broker and Griffin at the MACV-SOG Recondo school in Da Nang.“Takes forever,” a young Broker had protested.The Aussie had cut them with the bemused utter contempt he reserved for regular American troops.“The object, mate, is to get to the other side of the fuckin’ woods alive.”Broker had come home alive and trusted the method.It took him ten minutes to cover the two hundred yards to the end of Griffin’s land.He came to the yellow No Hunting sign posted on the property line where the connecting trail T-boned into the broader ski trail.He stopped dead still, his alertness total and jagged, like a snapped tuning fork.Faint but definite, he heard a tinkle on the wind.Broker stood unmoving.There it was again.He experienced a flush of almost preadolescent excitement.He could picture the smile on Kit’s face.When Daddy found the kitty.Okay.Don’t blow it.Gotta spot her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]