“Are you sure we’re still on North Range?” asked Keira.
“Is she going to kick my ass all night?” asked Quinn.
“Probably,” said Nathan.
“Great,” said Quinn, lowering his goggles in place and rolling down his window to study the landscape.
She smiled in the dark. If Nathan had sided with Quinn, she would have punched the back of his head. She was still pissed at him for concealing the most important aspect of his morning fiasco at the beach. Police involvement was frightening enough. The San Diego County Police Department, particularly its Special Activities Group, didn’t have an impressive track record of observing citizen rights, but stealth boats picking up divers? At a beach adjacent to a sabotaged nuclear plant? What was Nate thinking? She wanted to hit the back of his head anyway.
Quinn rolled the window up. “This has to be Talega. We’ll head up that hill, on a slightly less improved road, for about fifteen minutes or so, before we start looking for a suitable campsite.”
“I presume ‘less improved’ translates into ‘ass-breaking’?” said Keira.
“You presume correctly.”
Thirty-two harrowing minutes later, their trip along a narrow gravel road ended on a ridgeline overlooking a vast sea of dark hills and ravines. Sporadic lighting dotted the horizon to their left. Behind the jeep, she saw nothing but flat, endless hues of night.
“There’s a maneuver trail along the top of this ridgeline, passable by tactical vehicles, so you should stay clear of the ridge. I’ll drive you about a hundred yards down the trail and get you situated. You’ll find a bunch of deep draws, which would be perfect for hiding.”
“I remember a lot of that from basic land-navigation courses in ROTC,” said her husband.
“You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Even in the dark.”
“You’re just going to point us in the right direction and take off?” asked Nathan.
“You’ll be fine,” said Quinn. “You’ve been camping, right?”
“Yeah,” said Nathan. “We’ve been camping.”
Quinn drove them a little farther on what appeared to be a trail wider than either of the roads they took to arrive on the ridgeline. Keira eased her sleeping son to the seat and joined her husband and Quinn at the back of the jeep.
“I can’t believe he’s asleep,” she said.
“It’s late, and stress plays weird tricks on the body. I’ve had Marines fall asleep during choppy fifteen-minute helicopter rides to a mountain raid. The little guy did well tonight. You all did well.”
She nodded, feeling as exhausted as her son. “Let’s get this over with.”
She examined the vehicle’s contents and was instantly reminded that Nathan had ditched Owen’s bug-out bag during their desperate escape from the house. Her husband had done the right thing under the circumstances—lightening the load so Owen could keep up.
“David,” she said, “can I ask you to buy Owen some new clothes tomorrow? Maybe a few items to keep him busy. We had to leave his backpack behind. We can give you money.”
“That’s fine. Write down the sizes of what you want me to buy. Don’t worry about the money,” said Quinn. “I won’t be able to bring the stuff back until after dark, though.”
“That’s fine. Thank you. It’ll mean a lot to him.”
“No worries.” Quinn pulled an overstuffed camouflaged rucksack out of the jeep and dropped it on the ground behind the jeep. “This should be everything you need to stay warm and dry. You’ll also find a few squashed rolls of toilet paper in there somewhere.”
He dragged two tan five-gallon plastic jerricans to the edge of the compartment and reached deeper into the back to grab a cardboard box held tightly together with plastic strapping. He pulled the box into the overhead light. MEAL, READY TO EAT, INDIVIDUAL.
“And this should be everything you need to eat and drink,” said Quinn. “Twelve delicious MREs and ten gallons of plastic-flavored water. There’s drink powder in the MREs to help with that. I’d eat two a day, just in case something happens and I can’t get back tomorrow night.”
“What if you can’t get back at all?” asked Nathan.
“If you don’t see me within forty-eight hours, assume I’m out of the picture altogether. Walk in a westerly direction along the ridgeline trail. One way or the other, you’ll run into Camp San Mateo in about seven miles. Just keep working your way west. Insert the battery in your phone and call the police or something.”
Then what? If Quinn didn’t return, they might be better off trying to live off the land. They’d have a better chance of survival. She stared into the night behind them, trying to make sense of the ground outside of the jeep’s dome-light radius. At least they had flashlights.
“Any way you’d be willing to part with the night-vision goggles?” she asked, figuring she’d give it a try.
“Not if you want me to see me again—alive,” said Quinn. “I wouldn’t get very far. You’d probably hear the crash from here.”
“How are we supposed to set up the tent in the dark?” she said.
“We have flashlights,” said Nathan.
She shook her head. “Help me out a little, honey.”
“Sorry,” mumbled Nathan.
Quinn stared at them with his hands on his hips. “There is no tent.”
“What?” she said, half expecting him to say he was kidding.
“You’ve got two waterproof bivy sacks, which are like thin shells. Also, an all-weather sleeping system that consists of a light sleeping bag and a cold-weather bag. Plenty to share.”
“We’re sleeping on the open ground?” she said. “Is that even safe? Didn’t your dad mention rattlesnakes and tarantulas out here?”
“Shhh,” said her husband, pointing toward Owen. “I don’t remember him saying that was a big problem in the field.”
Quinn smiled and said, “Well, it is. Kind of.”
“Nice,” she said. “Happy sleeping.”
“We sleep in the open all the time, rain or shine. Just keep the bivy sack zipped up tightly so nothing can get in,” said Quinn, chuckling.
“Looks like one of us doesn’t get one of the bivy things,” said Keira.
“I wonder who that’ll be?” asked Nathan.
“Everyone will be fine,” Quinn said. “If it makes you feel any better, there’s an old poncho in there somewhere that can be rigged up as a shelter, if you have some cord.”
“We do, actually,” said Nathan. “Each backpack has a thirty-foot length of cord. I remember my dad showing me how to make a poncho shelter.”
“Well, there you go. Sounds like you sort of know what you’re doing.”
“Sort of is the key term,” said Keira, surprised by Nate’s sudden confidence in his survival craft.
“We can handle it,” said Nathan, poking his head into the back of the jeep. “Owen, you ready for a little camping trip?”
“He’s more or less passed out,” said Keira. “Which should make hiking into one of your draws or spurs a real treat in the dark.”
“You can sleep on the flat ground off the ridgeline trail,” Quinn said. “Just make sure you hide yourself in one of the draws at first light. You’ll get some Marines from San Mateo running up here for morning PT.”
“Fourteen miles?” asked Keira. They’d stopped at his battalion headquarters in San Mateo to pick up the MREs and water. She couldn’t imagine anyone jogging this far and then jogging back.
“It’s not an everyday run. I take my Marines on a gut check through these hills a few times a month,” said Quinn. “If things get ridiculous with Cerberus, I can schedule some kind of field operation and park a platoon around you.”
“Things haven’t gotten ridiculous yet?” asked Keira.
Quinn didn’t respond right away. “I don’t know. Somehow I doubt it.”
She helped Nathan drag the gear to a flattened grassy area fifty feet away from the road, near the mouth of a deep draw. The narrow, downward
sloping gulley should be the perfect place for them to hide in the morning. When they were finished, Nathan lifted their son out of the jeep and stood next to her, waiting for Quinn to finish rearranging the back of the jeep. The Marine shut the jeep’s back hatch and handed Keira one of the MP-20s and two spare magazines.
“Just in case,” said Quinn.
“Thank you,” she said. “For all of this. Make sure you pass that along to Alison.”
They’d met his wife, Alison, at the Main Side Exchange parking lot before driving to the north side of the base. She looked rattled and decidedly unsure of Quinn’s passengers. Moments before, she’d received an emergency report through her vehicle’s state broadcast system about an explosion south of Carlsbad, near the interstate. They’d seen the same report on the jeep’s HUD, wondering if it was somehow connected to the night’s insanity.
“Don’t thank me yet,” said Quinn. “We have a long way to go. I’ll let your parents know that you’re tucked away safe and sound.”
“Drive safe,” said her husband.
“Don’t worry,” said Quinn, lifting the second MP-20 off the front seat. “I will.”
The night swallowed the jeep, leaving only the crackle of its tires and an intermittent red brake light.
“Are you still mad at me?” asked Nathan, holding their son’s limp, sleeping body in his arms.
“Of course I am, but I still love you the same. Let’s get Owen zipped up inside one of those bivy sacks,” she said, digging through her backpack for a flashlight. “I distinctly remember your dad telling stories about tarantulas.”
“He hated those things.”
“I’m not exactly a big fan of them either.”
“Then don’t point your flashlight at the ground,” he said, right before she was about to activate the light.
She hesitated for a second, then pressed the button anyway. The compact flashlight’s LED bulb illuminated a wide swath of the ground, exposing no creepy crawlies—for now.
CHAPTER 49
Chris Riggs loaded the last black-nylon duffel bag into the Range Rover and closed the hatch. Standing in the dark behind the vehicle, he contemplated the dark shape of Jon and Leah Fisher’s two-story, post-and-beam house. He wanted to burn it to the ground, but Leeds had been specific about what he wanted them to do.
Search the property and seize all computers, data storage devices, papers, receipts, address books—even refrigerator magnets. Anything that could reveal where the elder Fisher might hide. An obscure campground they’d visited. A nearby relative. Favorite getaway hotels. The possibilities were unlimited, and they didn’t have the manpower to scour all of Idaho and its surrounding states. They needed solid clues.
He had one more piece of bad news to deliver before leaving. Maybe it would change Leeds’s mind about the house. He really wanted to leave this place in ashes, and maybe start a bigger fire. Maybe burn the rest of Idaho down. He used his satphone to connect with Leeds.
“Talk to me, Riggs,” said Leeds.
“I didn’t find a note saying, ‘Feed the fish, we’ll be at the Ketchum Inn,’ but we filled both Range Rovers. We’ll find something.”
“I have a group of techs and another team en route to help process what you recovered,” said Leeds. “I want a preliminary search plan by midmorning.”
He was relieved Leeds didn’t say early morning. They wouldn’t be finished off-loading the SUVs into the hotel rooms until at least three a.m. Now for the bad news.
“I found something unexpected in the house,” said Riggs.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” asked Leeds. “What are we looking at?”
“Jon Fisher had IR motion detectors installed in the house, but not at the entrances, where you might expect them,” said Riggs. “I found one inside his basement workshop, and two more deeper inside the house on the ground level. As far as I could tell, they were hardwired to the home satcom router, which was fully operational.”
“Clever.”
“Yeah. We removed our countermeasure gear after clearing the entry points,” said Riggs. “Wherever he’s hiding, he knows we’ve been here. I think we should burn the place down.”
“You always think that,” said Leeds. “No, I’ll send the tech team out to see if they can somehow ping Fisher with the system. Maybe he logs into a site to check, or gets notifications sent to a phone. It’s worth a look. I’d prefer the house be there in the morning.”
“I thought you might say that,” said Riggs. “Hence the call. We’re putting the final touches on our own motion-sensor array. I plan to drive out of here in a few minutes.”
“Perfect. Send me the connection data for the array before you leave. Flagg wants everything to flow through the operations center.”
What else is new? Flagg had a reputation for micromanaging the shit out of his operations.
PART IV
CHAPTER 50
Supervisory Detective Anna Reeves directed her flashlight at the ground several feet ahead of her and followed a narrow taped-off path through the backyard of 2647 Pallux Way. The flimsy yellow tape led her toward a cluster of forensics investigators pointing at a dark stain on a wide bed of river pebbles toward the back wall of the property. An excessively bright work light positioned at the end of the chute, facing the detectives, cast long shadows on the tall stucco wall behind them.
“What’s up?” asked Reeves, squeezing past the tripod-mounted light.
“Good thing they held everyone back until forensics—and the lights—arrived,” said Tim Jackson, the county’s lead forensics investigator. “Initial flashlight sweeps missed this gem.”
“We do what we can not to contaminate your crime scenes,” said Reeves.
“Did you hear that?” asked Jackson, motioning with his hand toward the other investigators. “Detective Reeves respects what we do. There’s still hope for the department.”
“I was just being polite,” she said, winking at them. “Trying to avoid another lecture.”
“Aww, man. Had to go and burst my bubble—right in front of my colleagues. Brutal,” he said, kneeling in the squishy pebble bed next to the dark-maroon stain.
She took a knee next to him. “I see you found a blood stain. Great investigative work.”
“You’re on a roll this morning,” said Jackson, aiming a laser pointer at the beach ball–size stain.
The pointer’s green dot circled the stain, stopping on a small blood-glistened rock on the edge of the stain. No bigger than the tip of a thumb, it stood out among the smaller, smoother pebble layer.
“Want to guess what that is?” asked Jackson.
“A rock with blood on it?”
“To the untrained police detective’s eye, yes,” said Jackson. “But to the expert forensics investigator, who has spent years—”
“It’s way too early for this,” said Reeves. “Just tell me.”
“Piece of brain lobe.”
“Way too early for that, too,” she said. “Theory?”
“My very educated guess is that the stain came from a head wound.”
“Not exactly a controversial theory,” said Reeves.
“I’m just getting started,” said Jackson. “We’re looking at a head wound, likely produced by a projectile. Blunt-force weapons or something like an ax would leave blood everywhere—along with a lot more brain. Someone dropped right here and bled from a localized head wound. Bullet hole.”
“Interesting,” she said, standing up to examine the stucco boundary wall. “No splatter or spray on the wall?”
“None that we could find.”
“The rest of the yard?” Reeves added, sweeping her flashlight in an arc from the wall to the house.
“This is the only visible concentration,” said Jackson, standing up next to her and pointing at the house. “If our victim was hit from this general direction, we’d have some spray on the wall—and possibly some kind of bullet impact.”
“If it was a through-and-through.”
“Rattlers usually make a neat hole in one side and bounce around inside the skull, lodging in the brain,” said Jackson. “A through-and-through almost always leaves some gray matter behind. Usually cracks open the skull on the opposite side. A nice luminol spray-down while it’s still dark will tell us if we have any aerosolized blood patterns. We could determine the direction of gunfire.”
“Do it,” she said. “The whole scene isn’t making much sense to me yet. There’s no sign of struggle inside the house, besides the broken door leading from the garage. One of their vehicles is missing, last tracked heading south on Interstate 805. Exited at Imperial Avenue and parked at the Home Depot a few blocks down before it went dark.”
“He removed the tracking module?” asked Jackson.
“We don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “We can’t find the vehicle.”
“I noticed a purse on the kitchen table,” said Jackson. “Looked like one of those lady wallets still inside. Someone left in a hurry?”
“My purse follows me everywhere,” she said, confirming his theory. “Any shell casings?”
“None. I found very little physical evidence beyond this wonderfully perplexing bloodstain, six spent M18 smoke grenades scattered on Pallux Way, and a child-size backpack filled with survival gear on Summerdale,” he said, pointing past the backyard wall.
“That’s another mystery,” said Reeves. “If Fisher fled with his family in the car, why is one of their bug-out bags one street over?”
“Bug bag?” asked Jackson.
“Bug-out bag. It’s a portable emergency kit that preppers keep ready at all times in case they have to leave their house without warning. Clothes, food, supplies for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They sold a lot of them in San Diego after the 2023 wildfires.”
“I didn’t see any more bug-out bags in the house,” said Jackson. “And they left a ton of survival gear behind. The car in the garage is mostly packed with personal stuff.”
“It feels like they had been planning to leave for a while, but something happened to expedite their timeline,” said Reeves.
Jackson pointed at the bloodstain. “I’d say your theory is sound.”
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