Camouflage

by Aaron Pogue

  She saw the pain and fear in Randall's eyes. She leaned closer. "Where were you taking me?"

  "I told you we needed to make a quick stop—"

  She shook her head and he shut up. She asked again. "Where were you taking me?"

  "They said you were helpless." He sucked in a terrified breath, eyes straining to try to see the gun digging into his throat. "You sure seemed helpless."

  "I'm not." She lifted her right knee and pressed it against his sternum. She put her weight on it, pinning him there, then eased off with the gun and raised it so he could clearly see the butt of it. "My gun's unlocked, and I'm ready to use it. Understand?"

  He nodded, miserable, and she nodded back at him. "Where did you spend the day?"

  He swallowed hard, and shook his head. "I can't tell you that. They'll kill me."

  "I'll kill you," she said with all the menace she could muster, but he gave a little shake.

  "You won't." He certainly sounded afraid. "But they would. They really would."

  "Who?" she asked. He didn't answer, and she lowered the gun. She backed off the pressure on her knee, too. "We can protect you. We want to put them away."

  "You can't," he said. "They're too good. They make you and me look like little children."

  She frowned. Then she reached with her left hand and pulled the handle on the door. It fell halfway open, and she kicked out with her knee, sending the shotgun clattering out of reach, and the door the rest of the way open. "Get out," she said, backing away. "Nice and slow."

  He flexed his injured right hand a couple times, then climbed out, holding both hands out in front of him, fingers spread. She kept her gun trained on him and followed him out. Then she stepped quickly over to recover the shotgun and gave a quick glance around.

  They were back out on a remote stretch of state highway, probably at least a mile from town. She saw a recorder mounted on a low steel pole just off the road and gestured with the gun for him to start walking toward it.

  "How much did they offer you?" she said.

  He glanced back over his shoulder, and she saw gratitude in his eyes. For the chance to explain himself. "More'n I could make in two years at the coal mine. They're serious. I didn't want to hurt you—"

  "You didn't," she said. "In fact, I'm grateful for everything you did for me. Did you know, then?"

  He shook his head no. "Went into town for breakfast," he said. "That's when they told me. Made the offer."

  "What were you going to do? Just dump me in the woods?" She thought about it for a moment and nodded. "Somewhere near that broadcast tower." His silence was answer enough. "Stop right there."

  He stopped, his back to her, and she saw his raised hands were trembling. He stood in full view of the recorder, and she stepped up right behind him.

  "Repeat after me," she said, and waited until he nodded. "I'm Special Agent Katie Pratt." He repeated it, stammering a little on the title, but he got her name clear enough. "Good," she said. "Now say, 'help.'"

  "Why?"

  "Just say it." She looked left and right, but there were no other cars in sight. She felt an itch on the back of her neck. All those miles of dense woods on both sides. You could hide an army in there.

  "Say it!" she snapped, jamming the gun against the back of his head.

  "Help!" he cried, and it was genuine. She nodded to herself, then bent her arm and brought the butt of her gun down hard against the back of his skull. He collapsed in a pile on the pebbled gravel, and Katie looked straight into the recorder's lens.

  "When you get this, Reed, you'd better send Phillips to come rescue me." She felt a dark smile tugging at her lips. "Because I'm definitely going to get into trouble."

  She turned, raising the shotgun to her hip, and fired it at the rented car. Lead shot peppered the hood and fender but otherwise didn't do much damage. Still, that gave her property damage, assault, and reckless discharge of a deadly weapon all in a twenty second window. If that didn't get promoted to Ghost Targets, nothing would.

  She turned back to the recorder. "You can't trust any of the locals," she said. She started to say more, hesitated trying to find the right words, and in the sudden silence she heard the buzz of a car approaching. She glanced rapidly right and left, then sprinted six short steps straight ahead and disappeared into the woods.

  No matter how she tried, Katie wasn't quiet moving through the trees. Instead, she tried to move fast, pushing forward and curling to the right, back toward town, then on around and back toward the road as she heard the car slow to a stop. She got to a place where she could observe unseen, then fell down and stayed very still as the car on the road backed up and stopped, right across from poor Randall.

  Ken Thomas got out. She recognized him from the casefile as a wealthy software tester and a serious hunter. He frowned down at Randall's form, then said something quickly into his headset and darted across the road.

  She growled to herself as she watched him take a call. He was too far away for her to hear anything he was saying. The man could have represented rescue, or he could have been the one waiting at the other end of the road for Randall to deliver her. There was no way to know, so she held her ground, waited, and watched.

  Another car came, this one a pickup from the direction of town, and Katie watched Wade Hartman join Ken Thomas for a whispered conference. He was a bigwig here in town—owned most of the county's foresting operations and half the town's mortgages. A big man, too, with unkempt black hair and the permanent shadow of facial hair. That one certainly could've put a real scare into Randall. He and Ken were well-known associates, too, so his appearance didn't really reveal too much. The two of them carried Randall unceremoniously over to Wade's truck and dumped him in the bed. Then Wade climbed back in and headed straight back toward town.

  Ken stuck around for a moment, looking up and down the road in both directions. He checked something on his handheld, said something into his headset, and then wandered over to the stricken taxi. He ran a finger over the shotgun damage on the hood, then shook his head bitterly and said something else into his headset. He stepped back, and the car sped off down the road to the west.

  Then Ken stooped and peered into the woods, eyes piercing, and for a moment they seemed to settle right on her. But something else caught his attention, and he checked his handheld again. After that he ran straight to his car, jumped in, and it sped back off to the west. Away from town.

  She stayed where she was, breathing slowly and trying to make sense of everything she'd just seen. She had some guesses, but nothing definite. She had no desire to spend the night in the woods, though. She climbed to her feet, gave one longing look at the smooth, easy road just out of reach, then turned deeper into the trees and out of sight.

  It took her most of an hour to make the mile hike back to town through the woods. Then she had to find somewhere to lay low. She was pretty confident Reed would send Phillips straight to Randall's place once he got her message, but she didn't want to be anywhere near there just yet. Even with her antics it would take at least an hour for the footage to process through local jurisdictions and filter up to Ghost Targets.

  She stopped just inside the woods, at the junction between State Highway 16 and Folla Road, and watched the yards of three houses she could see from there. She waited, running calculations in her head. She figured Craig would recognize her name and flag Reed immediately, but if he didn't know she was in trouble yet he might not check the message until he found some free time. It was already after five, so Reed would have to track down Phillips—and probably a partner, since there was a clear sign of foul play out here—and then it was a four-hour drive. They could make it three hours if Phillips caught a flight to Charleston and drove back east, maybe two if Reed could scare up a helicopter to fly straight out....

  So that gave her two to four hours minimum. If Reed took longer to get around to it, if he had trouble finding someone to send after her...well, he could always call it in to the Charleston PD, but c
ops these days couldn't do a thing without Hathor to hold their hands. She knew that all too well.

  That left her on her own. She needed to hide out. The clouds were dark overhead again today, and she sure wouldn't mind finding some shelter. Some more ammunition for the shotgun would be nice, too, but she wasn't going to risk that.

  What really held her attention just at the moment was a clothesline out back of the nearest of the three houses. Two dark blue sheets fluttered in the afternoon breeze, and beside them hung two pairs of bluejeans and a couple women's fitted Ts. They looked about the right size, and even a mile in the trees moving at her own pace had reminded her how poorly dressed she was for this type of work. Her right leg, bare to the knee, was already scratched and bruised in a dozen new places.

  She couldn't see any movement inside the house, and she hadn't seen any for fifteen minutes now. She looked both ways, checked that there were no cars coming, and then scampered across Folla and into the trees directly behind the house. That put her out of sight from both roads, and maybe ten paces from the clothesline. She waited, watching and listening for any reaction to her quick sprint, but none came.

  She took one step out of the trees, and immediately heard the slam of a screen door. She cursed quietly and dove back into cover, looking around desperately, but she didn't see a thing. Then, a moment later, she spotted a woman in her twenties stepping past the front of the house Katie was hiding behind—probably the owner of the clothes Katie hoped to steal. Katie leaned forward, trying to get a good measure of her body style, and blinked in surprise when she recognized the girl. It was Faye Burke, Timothy's widow.

  She looked back at the house—Timothy's house—and bit her lip in thought. Then the sound of a car approaching and slowing caught her attention. She turned back to the left and saw Avery Dean leaning out an open window to talk with Faye.

  Avery she knew. Jurisprudence had marked him the most likely suspect for Timmy's murder, although at a 28 percent confidence the chances were still slim. But his personality was right and he owned the right kind of rifle. That was everything they had to go on.

  Now, watching him chat with Timothy's widow, Katie felt a desperate urge to know what he was saying. She moved closer, staying back in the trees, then bent low and darted forward behind the cover of a low picket fence to get to the corner of the house. She hid herself against the cinder block crawlspace and eased up to the edge to get as close as she could to the other two.

  If she hadn't been ghosted Hathor might have sounded a polite warning to one of them, but as it was she got the opportunity to hear them clearly. And obviously neither of them had noticed her approach, because they were both deep in conversation.

  "I told you," Faye said, trying to add some politeness to her clearly irritated tone, "I haven't seen anyone."

  "Hey, I'm just looking out for you. Pretty little thing, all alone, you never know what could happen." He smiled and made caring eyes at her, but Katie recognized the threat just as clearly as Faye did. Faye took a step back, and Avery nodded. "You keep your eyes out, and you let somebody know if you hear anything."

  "But what?" Faye said. "Tell me what's going on."

  "That federal bitch beat the hell out of our Randall, is what. Got herself into some kind of trouble, and then when he offered to help her out, she jacked 'im in the skull and left him to die on the side of the road. We're dealing with a real rogue agent here."

  "Randall, huh?" Faye asked, with a little more interest and not enough disgust for Avery's sake.

  "Yeah. Randall. He's one of us." Katie watched him raise his eyebrows, driving his point home. "Just like you."

  "Of course," Faye said. "That bitch." But her tone was flat, almost mocking. She wasn't trying too hard to sound convincing. Katie thought maybe she liked this girl.

  Avery clearly didn't. He sneered at her, shook his head, and muttered something Katie didn't quite catch. Then he rolled up the window and let his car speed on its way out of town. Faye stood where she was, watching until he was out of sight, then she spat on the ground in his wake and picked her way on across the road, up toward the town.

  Katie watched until she was out of sight then sprinted to the clotheslines. Thirty seconds got her a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a gray wool jacket with a hood. She ripped them free of their clips and made a run for it.

  She made it halfway back to the trees, then froze in place. Faye Burke. Katie looked back over her shoulder in the direction the other woman had been heading. Faye worked at the Wolf Trap. She was one of the people Katie had meant to interview last night. Her shift ran six to midnight.

  Katie turned on her heel, eyes searching, but there was still nobody in sight. She darted back over to the house and tried the door, found it locked, then slammed the butt end of the shotgun against the wood right above the locking mechanism. The door flew open with a crash and Katie followed it quickly in. She caught it before it could fall closed behind her, worried the magnets would re-engage and trap her inside. She spotted a mud-caked boot right by the door—probably one of Timmy's—and propped it in the gap. Then she stopped to think.

  Timothy Burke's house. She'd checked it out in HaRRE, but there hadn't been anything too noteworthy. It was a real house but no larger than Randall's trailer. Same basic floorplan, too, with a kitchen and living room at one end, a single hall along the outside wall that passed a bathroom, but this one had two cramped bedrooms instead of just one.

  Katie headed straight to the bedroom on the left, the one she knew to be Timmy's office. The blinds were already closed, and the room had the dusty smell of one often unused. Katie threw her bundle down on the desktop and quickly changed into the new clothes. She transferred the useless handheld into the pocket of the jeans and used her own belt to cinch the waist around her hips.

  She tried on the T-shirt, too, but it hung off her in big folds. She went back to her own blouse, stained and ripped though it was. The hoodie covered it well enough. It hung down past her hips, but she was happy to hide back in the depths of the oversized hood. She checked through all her pockets one more time and came out with the wadded handful of note pages from Randall's trailer, but that was it.

  Then she stopped, and looked around the room. It felt familiar from her time here in HaRRE, but there was something missing. She tried to activate the desktop, but she wasn't too surprised when it denied her access. She took a step back, toward the door, and tried to remember how the room had looked on her handheld. If it hadn't been for the notes in her hand, she would've missed it.

  Aside from her shredded slacks and the too-big T-shirt, the desktop was empty. She remembered piles of notepads, though—not the little ones Martin carried and Randall used, but big legal-sized pads lined in college rule, and filled with a tight, precise handwriting. She frowned, wondering at the number of people in this town who still used pen and paper. Then she looked around and wondered where the notepads could have gone.

  There were no filing cabinets, no drawers on the desk, no bookshelves—just a sofa, a desk chair, and an empty aquarium on a stand. She stepped out into the hall, peeked into the master bedroom, and even looked in the living room. They were nowhere to be seen.

  On the way down the hall Katie caught a glimpse of herself flashing past in the bathroom mirror. She went back, and looked herself up and down. The disguise was pretty effective. Casual. Local. She used a handful of toilet paper to smear most of the mud off her shoes, then gathered up her things and headed back out the back door.

  She went ten paces into the trees, just far enough to be decently concealed, then found a spot to stash her clothes and the shotgun. The handgun on its holster disappeared within the copious folds of the hoodie, so she wasn't worried about it, but the shotgun would have drawn some attention.

  Then she stood for a moment and thought. She needed help. She needed to know what was in Timmy's notes, and where they'd gone. She needed to know who in this town was gunning for her. And she needed to find that all out with
out tipping her hand. Katie only knew one person in town who could help her with all that.

  7. The Wolf Trap

  Faye worked at the bar—Katie knew that from the report. She knew roughly where to find it, too, straight up 16 in the middle of town. She darted back across Folla and into the trees, but only stuck to their cover for a quarter mile or so. That got her within sight of the building she wanted, so she found a good spot to slip out of the trees and trotted across the highway to the bar.

  It looked like a run-down shack, someone's oversized storage shed, with a corrugated tin roof and rough cedar paneled walls, and a porch out front made of unfinished one-by-fours. Its appearance was deceiving. Katie knew this little bar to be the most prosperous business in town.

  So she wasn't surprised when she pulled open the light steel door and found the interior packed with people. Country music blared over the radio and decorative neon signs glowed on all four walls, advertising every major beer label in the country. Katie stepped quickly away from the door, hiding herself behind a knot of townsfolk standing near the bar while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. As soon as she could see clearly she scanned the room for any sign of hostile faces—or anyone paying close attention to her, really—and then went looking for Faye Burke.

  Faye found her first. She stepped out of nowhere, right up in Katie's face, and glared down at her. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she hissed.

  "Mrs. Burke," Katie said quietly. "I need your help."

  Instead of answering, Faye darted a frantic glance around the room, then put on a playful tone completely at odds with the sharpness in her eyes. "Everyone in here does, honey. You'll have to wait your turn." She nodded toward a shadowy corner way in the back and said, "Grab a table. I'll be by soon as I can find a minute." Then she whisked away to tend to the crowd near the door.