Mead started the truck but kept his headlights off. Instead of pulling a U-turn, he backed into the road, bathing Joe in red backup lights, then cranked his wheel and rolled downhill. As he did, Joe heard muffled words being spoken from inside the vehicle but couldn’t make them out. Not until the SUV was out of sight below in the trees did its headlights flash on.
It wasn’t a luggage rack on top of the SUV, Joe realized, but the light bar of the sheriff’s department GMC Yukon.
First Nate, and now Mead and Latta, Joe thought. Who else would reveal he was on the wrong side tonight?
Joe was no mechanic, but it was obvious what they’d done to his pickup when he rolled under it with a mini Maglite in his teeth.
Smith had attached a cheap prepaid cell phone — the same make and model Joe had noticed at the Sundance convenience store — to the undercarriage of his pickup. It was secured with strips of electrician’s tape that had been rolled around the front axle. The phone was powered on but inert, and there were two wires — one red, one white — that snaked out from its plastic shell. Joe followed the wires from the phone as they looped around and through steel undergirders toward the mid-rear of the vehicle. There, they were jammed into what looked like a fist-sized lump of light gray clay that had been pressed against the outside sheet metal wall of the gas tank.
He stared at the assembly and thought about it. The clay was obviously plastic explosive, likely C-4 or Semtex. The wires fed into a thin silver tube — a blasting cap — inserted into the lump. The idea, he guessed, was to leave the bomb under his truck until they decided to trigger it with a remote call to the cell phone, which would activate the explosives in back and blow his truck in half using its own fuel. They wouldn’t even have to tail him — just be sure he was driving the roads of Medicine Wheel County, preferably on a series of steep switchbacks with cell reception — and hit the speed dial.
Then: Boom.
Conceivably, Joe would be injured or killed instantly or lose control of the vehicle and plunge off the mountain. The gasoline fire would consume the truck and melt away the components and render the cell phone unrecognizable.
Still, he thought, it was a sloppy and desperate act. There were holes in the plot. State and federal forensics units could determine the origin of the explosion, the specific brand of plastic, and maybe find the wires and cell phone detonator. The prepaid phone could possibly be traced to where it was purchased, and by whom.
Joe knew he’d gotten their attention. His first inclination was to go right back after them. Bill Critchfield and Gene Smith weren’t hard to find. But what would he do — arrest them and take them to the county jail, which was run by coconspirator R. C. Mead? Or in front of Judge Bartholomew, who also was likely in on the act?
And he didn’t dare try to call any backup. Latta was involved, and likely the town cops and sheriff’s deputies. A request made by dispatch through channels would be instantly heard by all the players.
In the past, he knew who he’d call for help: Nate Romanowski. But Nate had apparently crossed over as well.
Then he recalled his promise to Marybeth, and vowed to leave Medicine Wheel County the next day. The Feds and state boys could follow up.
The question, though, was whether he could keep himself safe until the big guns moved in to take over.
A thought hit him. What if the explosive had been planted not to kill him while he drove, but to be activated remotely to warn him off? And what if they decided to call the number on the cell phone at that moment, once the four men were far enough away not to be tied to the scene?
Joe felt his gut contract, and he stared at the cell phone, willing it not to light up with a call. He quickly scrambled back to the gas tank and reached up — his movements seemed incredibly slow in his mind — and pulled the blasting cap out of the lump. Then he switched ends and cut the cell phone loose from the tape and powered it off. If they tried to call now, he thought with relief, nothing would happen.
“Sorry, girl,” Joe said to Daisy on the bench seat of his truck as he drove out of the parking lot. “You’ve been cooped up all night. But you’re a lousy watchdog.”
She responded to the tone of his voice and not his words with a rhythmic thumping of her tail on the inside of the passenger door.
The bomb components were in a large plastic evidence bag on the floor of the cab. The cell phone was off and the wires and blasting cap weren’t attached to anything, but Joe was nervous about the lump of explosives. He drove extra-slowly to the apple orchard, avoiding potholes and rocks. He blew out a breath of relief when he reached his destination and killed the engine. But he made it a point not to slam his door shut, and eased it closed.
The move would puzzle his enemies, he figured. Anna would no doubt call them at dawn to report Joe missing, his pickup gone. A quick check of his room would reveal that he’d packed up and left during the night.
He wondered what they’d do. Would they try and locate him before calling the number on the cell phone under the pickup? Or would they panic and hold off until they knew it would be a clean kill? Either way, he figured, they’d be confused… and alarmed.
Joe convinced Daisy to hop up on the rear platform of the ATV. The key to his room at the hunting lodge was in his front pocket, and he couldn’t think of a better place to bunker in and get some sleep. He started the four-wheeler and began to pull away from his truck when a thought came to him that made him grin.
Then he cranked on the handlebars and returned to the pickup. If the C-4 was stable enough not to explode on the ride to the orchard, it was stable enough to survive a trail ride as well, he thought. But all the way to the Black Forest Inn he drove slowly and cautiously, avoiding rocks and bumps, in a cold sweat, despite the freezing air.
Overhead, a thick wall of storm clouds extinguished the stars as it advanced from the northwest.
There was no one at the front counter when Joe led Daisy into the lobby of the old hunting lodge, just as there had been no one about outside. He removed his hat and whapped it on his thigh to clear the half-inch of snow that had gathered on the brim. The door to the saloon was shut and locked, and the interior lights were muted. If the decades-old bull moose head on the wall could have seen through its dusty glass eyes, it would have beheld a dirty and disheveled man with a pair of ATV saddlebags over his shoulder, a shotgun in his hand, and a tired yellow Labrador on his boot heels.
Joe circled behind the lectern and checked the guest registry book. No Nate Romanowski. He saw where Alice had written Maint next to room 318, which corresponded to the key she’d given him. He guessed Maint meant “maintenance,” the reason she listed for not renting it out. All the other rooms in the lodge were full.
He nodded at his luck. For the hundred dollars cash that was now in Alice’s pocket, he had inadvertently gone off the grid.
Room 318 was small, dark, and smelled of carpet fungus and historic flatulence. The walls were fake wood-grain sheets of paneling that were blistered from a leaking roof or broken ceiling pipe. The double bed sagged in the middle and was lit by a naked low-wattage bulb that hung from a cord. The curtains were pulled across a tiny window, and they looked like they were made of lace. Obviously, Joe thought, Templeton’s men hadn’t renovated it yet.
Joe parted the curtains to find a view of the parking lot. The window opened roughly, but it was too small to climb through if it came to that.