So they’d run to the cemetery through the trees and the darkness from a secluded spot a mile-and-a-half away, where they’d parked the SUV.
As long as Jack had known Troy, he still marveled at his younger brother’s endurance as they closed in on the cemetery. They’d both been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and it had already been a hell of a day. But Troy wasn’t missing a beat. His mind and body were still working at peak efficiency, even though he’d taken a bullet, too. He was barely breathing hard, and his strides looked smooth and effortless.
Jack was operating on pure adrenaline, but he could feel exhaustion creeping up on him. Fatigue hadn’t made a dent in Troy, not even a ding.
Jack marveled at Troy’s sense of direction, too. The stone wall they were approaching had to be the cemetery’s perimeter. He’d led them straight here from the SUV without checking his bearings once. Granted, the moon was casting a decent light down through the leaves, but still. The trees in this forest were densely packed. Doing what Troy had just done in the daylight would have been extraordinary. Doing it at night was off the hook.
Troy had that bloodhound gift. He could smell his target from miles away even when that target was emitting no scent.
Jack leaned over beside a tree and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath when Troy reached out to stop him. They were still thirty feet from the cemetery wall.
“Stay here,” Troy whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
Jack took a few more deep but quiet breaths, then pulled the pistol from his belt and glanced around through the shadows. It was eerily quiet out here. There wasn’t a wisp of a breeze or a call from the wild — mammal, bird, or insect.
“Come up,” Troy called quietly.
Jack cringed as he moved. His footsteps on last year’s dead, dry leaves seemed so loud. “See anything?” he asked as he reached Troy, who was hunched down behind the three-foot wall.
“There’s a van in the parking lot.” Troy gestured across the cemetery, which was half the size of a football field. “It’s the only vehicle over there. See it?”
As Jack rose up slightly and squinted, he spotted the top of the vehicle through the night. “Barely, but I don’t see anyone around it.”
“Maybe someone’s behind it. I doubt L.J. or Karen are in it. It could just be a decoy. Still, that’s where they told Jennie to have us meet them.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Split up,” Troy answered, dropping a medium-sized canvas bag on the ground.
They’d bought it at a Walmart on the way there. Inside it were several reams of paper. It had to at least look like they were carrying cash.
“I go first. I’m gonna cut through the tombstones, so they can see me if they’re watching. I’m gonna try and make them think I’m the only game in town. When I get halfway across, you start moving around the outside of the wall. I don’t know how much Jennie told them about us before tonight. But on the call I listened to, she only mentioned one of us, like I told her to.” He pointed right. “Go that way around the wall so I’ll know about where you are. Keep your gun in your right hand and your phone in your left.” Troy gestured down at Jack’s pocket. “Put it on vibrate only.”
“It already is,” Jack said, pulling the device out.
“All right, go all the way around to the opposite wall, the one that parallels this one. Wait for me there to text or call before you do anything.”
“Maybe we should call the cops, Troy.”
“No.”
“Troy—”
“No.”
“You can’t put Red Cell Seven ahead of Karen and L.J.”
“I would never do that.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. “Well, then—”
“Are we clear?” Troy asked.
“Yeah, we’re clear all right.”
Whether or not he called 911 would be a second-to-second decision. He was going to trust himself on that one and no one else, including Troy. If a shootout exploded, they might need help.
Troy tapped Jack’s pistol. “You ready to shoot that thing?”
“Hey, don’t—”
“I’m serious,” Troy cut in, grabbing Jack by the chin and pulling it so they were staring straight into each other’s eyes. “Are you ready this time?”
Jack glared back at Troy. “I’m ready.”
Troy nodded and gave Jack a firm pat on the shoulder. “Remember, start moving when I’m halfway across the cemetery. Keep low behind the wall, and keep checking your phone.”
And then Troy was gone, up and over the wall and moving in among the tombstones toward the far side of the cemetery, carrying the heavy canvas bag.
Eyes just above the top of the wall, Jack waited until Troy’s shadow was halfway across. Then he took off, hunched down so he wouldn’t be exposed above the wall, and keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of trouble ahead.
When he reached the first corner, he hesitated and rose up. But Troy had disappeared into the darkness. The moon had slipped behind a cloudbank.
Thirty seconds later he reached the next corner, and he peered around it cautiously. Still no one around the van he could see, and no sound of a motor idling. Still no call or message from Troy, either.
Finally, his phone vibrated, and he pulled up the new text immediately. Troy had made it to the far wall and was ready to jump over and approach the van. Jack was to go over the wall now so that he was inside the cemetery, then move along the wall until they saw each other, where he was to hold until Troy went over. Then he was to rise up as well and cover Troy as Troy headed for the van, which was in the parking lot about thirty feet outside the cemetery.
Jack pinged back a quick “ok,” slipped the phone into his pocket, then climbed the wall and eased down into the cemetery.
Now he was inside the wall closest to the van. Hunched down, he ran thirty yards, past a row of tombstones, until he spotted Troy, who was also crouched down against the inside of the wall. There, he stopped and gestured.
Troy gestured back, then pointed at the wall and motioned, indicating that he was going over it and toward the van. And that Jack should cover him.
As Troy rose up and scaled the wall, Jack stood up, too, and aimed the Glock at the van. There was still no one around it that he could see.
Troy dropped the canvas bag at the edge of the parking lot, and then moved cautiously toward the van, which was another twenty feet ahead of him.
“Careful,” Jack whispered to himself. His heart was beating so hard, the same way it had as they’d sprinted down that slope for the back of the pickup at the Griffin farm, and in the seconds before Wayne and the other guy had raced back out of the house. “Careful, brother.”
“A million dollars,” Kyle said quietly but firmly into his phone as he stood beside Ray’s Explorer in the middle of the forest. “And I want that million wired to the same account I had you use before, and I want it wired immediately.”
Kyle and Ray had parked on an old logging road that wound its way through the woods outside Creighton, the town where he and Ray had grown up together. As kids, they’d played war in this forest with the rest of the gang, using BB guns for weapons. Anyone unfamiliar with these woods would get lost in here very quickly, but they knew it like the backs of their hands.
At this point in its roundabout travels through the forest, the logging road passed within fifty yards of the Glen Haven Memorial Park. But the best part about its path was its unmarked status. Kyle had checked on all the Internet map applications he could find, and this dirt road didn’t show up anywhere.