She couldn’t blame them. Five hundred people had been put at risk by the traitor’s leaks.
The traitor who, as last reported, was living in a beachfront villa on the coast of Venezuela, probably using the extradition notices sent to officials there from U.S. law enforcement to start the fire in his barbecue pit to cook dinner.
Nilsson now parked the SUV in the lot where the kid had reported he’d jacked Merritt’s pickup truck. She climbed from the vehicle, closed the door and locked it. She adjusted the Glock 43 on her hip. The nine-millimeter model. She believed Shaw had the same. Or possibly the 42, which fired the slightly smaller .380 slug.
She made the rounds, knocking on doors, displaying her private investigator’s license and Merritt’s picture, and telling those who answered she was looking into a suspicious individual who had been hanging around the school.
True, in the way that truth can wear several coats.
Everyone was happy to talk to her — who didn’t want to round up all the perverts? — though men spent more time talking to her than the women did. The reason for this was obvious. But the six-foot Nilsson, who’d done a bit of modeling in college, wasn’t troubled. As somebody had once said of advertising: sex sells.
However long the discussion, though, no one could provide anything useful.
Then it was time to get back to the office. There she would check with the police, get a status update for the Jon Merritt manhunt. She would also attend to a dozen other matters. Security for a nuclear reactor manufacturer wasn’t put on hold simply because of one employee’s abusive husband.
Or for a manufacturer that had been the victim of an attempted robbery of a vital component by two different thieves in the same few days.
As she approached the Range Rover, Sonja Nilsson pulled her phone from her side pocket, paused and typed on the screen.
She’d barely finished doing so when the improvised explosive device erupted in a ragged shape of orange flame and launched shrapnel in a thousand different directions.
60
Shaw and Hannah were in the Kia, driving slowly through the field to a stand of trees beside the lake. They were off the driveway and the car rocked gently on the soft soil.
Hannah pulled off her stocking cap. He was surprised she had long hair. He’d thought it would be cropped. The dark blond strands, streaked with red coloring, were pulled back in a ponytail, bound with a black tie.
When they were about forty yards from the entranceway to the property — a gate in a post-and-rail fence — Shaw steered right and nosed the car into a stand of pine and scrub near the lakeshore. He shut the engine off and climbed out. Hannah joined him.
Slinging the backpack over his shoulder, he walked toward the gate. She followed.
They hiked through the field of low vegetation, yellow and pale green; it had not rained for some weeks. Grasshoppers and leafhoppers and stinkbugs danced away from their legs in fast streaks.
“Ick. I hate bugs.”
“Those are insects,” Shaw said, recalling his father’s lesson on the distinction. “Bugs are a type of insect.”
“Like, all bugs are insects but not all insects are bugs.”
“That’s it.”
She’d be wondering why the entomological distinction was important but now was not the time for a lesson in the value of precision in survivalism. Toxic versus nutritional. While Hemiptera, true bugs, could destroy plants, none were dangerous to humans. Nine types were edible.
They arrived at the gate. The girl swatted a mosquito.
Shaw stepped into the woods bordering the property, looked down and ripped from the ground several floss flower plants. He tore off the leaves and handed them to her. “It’s got coumarin in it. Crush it and rub it on.”
She smelled it, wrinkled her nose. “Bet it doesn’t taste as good as ginger.”
“Doesn’t,” Shaw said. “And it’ll make you puke.”
He withdrew the car remote and pressed lock. The horn beeped. Good. He’d been concerned about the distance. There are ways to increase the range of a car remote — press it against a bottle of sports drink or your head or add a piece of metal to the antenna — but there was no need for that here.
He picked up a long flat piece of bark and studied the ground until he found a small round pebble. From his backpack he took a roll of electrician’s tape. With this he secured the pebble against the panic button, and the remote itself he taped to the bark. He set this, remote side down, in one of the tire tracks in the driveway.
She laughed. “So when the car drives over it, the alarm goes off.” She seemed delighted at the idea. “This’s so dope.”
“Try it.”
She stepped on the bark and the Kia alarm blared.
“It worked!”
Shaw quickly picked up the bark and pressed the lock button, which shut the alarm off. He replaced it on the ground and scattered some leaves to hide it further.
The two began hiking back to the cabin.
“You learn that from your father?”
“Yes, and no. Not the remote specifically. But he taught us to improvise.”
“Like, who’s ‘us’?”
“I have a brother and sister.”
He explained about Russell — to the extent he could. Much of the man’s government security work was so secret even Shaw didn’t know his employer. Hannah was particularly interested to hear about Dorion, who had a degree in engineering. “Like your mother. She’s got a disaster response company. Hurricanes, oil spills.”
“You have any kids?” Hannah asked suddenly.
“No.”
Hannah watched more insects shoot out of their way. “Mom wants me to be an engineer and scientist.” She shrugged. “I’m good at math. She says I’m a prodigy. I don’t know. Maybe. But I solve a calculus problem, and it’s right and I’m like, okay, so? What I really really like’s writing — poetry, mostly — and taking pictures.” She was frowning. “I’d do a series here except Mom took my phone. I did something stupid.”
“The picture of the water tower you posted.”
“Yeah.”
Shaw said, “Look at it this way: you hadn’t posted it, I might not’ve found you.”
“I guess.”
“What would you do a selfie of here?”
She looked around. “Most of it’s boring. Nature? Ugh.” She squinted. “I know, I’d take one of you. You’d be in the background. Looking at the lake or the forest — checking for a place where there could be somebody dangerous. It’d be just your back. Dark, a silhouette.”
As they walked through the grass, she was looking at the lake. “Timber wolf? Are they around here?”
“Could be. They’re rare.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Usually they avoid humans.”
“But not always.”
“No.”
“You have your guns. If we’re attacked, you can shoot it.”
Shaw shook his head. “Don’t want to do that.”
“Why?”
“We’re in its territory. We’re the interlopers.”
“The what?”
“We’re the ones trespassing. If they see you, you don’t need to shoot. Just stand as tall as you can, open your jacket to make yourself look bigger. Don’t turn your back, just keep eye contact. Never run. If his tail goes up and his hackles rise...”
“What’s hackles?”
“The hairs on the back of its coat. If they go up and he’s growling, you growl back. Show him that you’re too much trouble to attack.”
“Have you ever done that?”
“A couple of times.”