Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [74]
I’m out the kitchen door, across the overgrown garden, and on the trail, keeping a hundred yards between us. As we move through the woods, I can see his shirt flashing up ahead. Then I lose him, but he has to stay on the trail or run through scrub. When we come out at the cottonwood trees, I duck below the wash. Now he’s in open territory, looking like any other fitness runner, tuned in to his iPod, dark stains on the T-shirt, churning muscular calves. The music keeps him focused—eyes ahead, not even thinking of watching the rear—so I stretch out and match his pace as we come up to the muddy tracks of the wildlife sanctuary.
Against the sky, the matrix of power wires becomes more defined as we draw close. To my right is the plain where the blind foal was found. As Stone keeps on moving through the maze of manzanita, an epiphany of logic breaks over me like a cold shower: He’s heading for the shooting range where I found the .50-caliber shell.
This is where he practices shooting his weapons. Including the sniper rifle that killed Sergeant Mackee.
I am getting excited now. I wish to call Donnato, but I know there is no cell phone service here. The hard-furrowed roads are hazardous for turned ankles, and Stone is slowing down. No shots echo—it’s too early for your ordinary amateur shooter. I take a spur trail and circle around to where I suspect he’s going, accelerating to beat him and duck into a concealed position behind the Dumpsters overflowing with trash and flies.
He stops in the center of the firing range, heaving and throwing drops of sweat. He swigs water and spits it out while turning around in a 360, checking the perimeter.
Where does he hide the guns? A chest buried somewhere? A cave in the wash?
Now he slides a black-and-silver phone from the belt holding the water bottle and glances up at the sky, moving until there are no power lines above him. The phone is way too big to be a cell. I can make out the profile of an antenna, like a little finger pointing up. He is using a satellite phone to get past our wiretaps.
You can only use a satellite phone outside, with a clear view to the sky. That is why he comes to the shooting range.
“Gemini? It’s Taurus. What have you got? You’re the expert. You’re the one with access to intel, the off-site, the whole deal. Don’t leave me hanging out here with my pants down, buddy.”
He waits. I wait. My breath comes fast.
“You said you could get past the SAC. I’m counting on it.”
The cold shower of logic becomes a deluge of ice. It is unmistakable. Dick Stone is talking to someone inside the Bureau.
On an untraceable satellite phone.
Twenty-five
Once again, I am a passenger in the dark, being driven along unknown roads to an uncertain destination—just like in undercover school. As in undercover school, I have made the strategic decision to imbibe an illegal substance, meaning I am as stoned as the rest of them on some awesome weed.
That night, before I could alert Donnato to the discovery of the satellite phone, we learned through a posting on the FAN Web site that Lillian, the sweet old bird-watcher rescued from the mustang corral, was dead.
Dinner was quesadillas, and Megan was quiet.
“What happened?” Sara said. “I thought she was okay.”
“She’d just had a heart-valve replacement and it got infected.”
“Too bad,” said Stone with a mouth full of cheese.
“It was a direct result of the action,” Megan snapped. Her face looked slack, darkness beneath the eyes. “She was traumatized, and then she’s taken to a bad hospital in a piss-poor excuse for a town.”
Slammer was jamming green apple halves and carrots into an industrial juicer.
“Do you have to do that?” Sara asked.
“Fiber, man.”
The juicer must have been outfitted with a jet engine.
Megan told Stone she was leaving for two days.
“Why?”
“Lillian’s memorial service.”
The juicer howled.
“Where?”
“San Jose.”
“Turn that thing off,” Stone