Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(104)

—

HE SAT IN THE TRUCK, watching the agents tear through his house, his mouth beginning to tremble, but he fought back tears. He wouldn’t cry about it. He wouldn’t exactly be martyred, since the website was a fake, but if he took out the Coil girl, at least people would see a lesson: you don’t fuck with serious people.

And he fantasized about hiding out in a wilderness—that had been done, and successfully—but it was, he thought, a fantasy. He could try, but the deep state would get him.

Before he left the truck stop, he called up a map program and found a Walmart Supercenter in Fitzgerald, Georgia, a half hour northeast of Tifton. He’d stop there for the night, he thought, outside the target town, in case somebody might have anticipated him.

He’d scout the next morning, find a spot, hit the girl, and run. The truck would be a liability after he hit her, because they’d have a starting point for him. Had to think about that.

From Savannah, he picked up a few miles of I-16 going west, then cut cross-country to Fitzgerald, arriving well after dark. He went inside the Walmart, got a sandwich, ate in the truck, then crawled inside the camper back, wrapped himself in a sleeping bag and tried to sleep.

He was almost there when Rachel Stokes showed up.



* * *



—

“WELL, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” she asked. She was standing outside the truck, but spoke through the side window, so he could only see her shattered face. “Everybody in the world is looking for your truck. You’re a rat in a trap: they’ve got your face, they’ve got your license tag, they’re going to put you in one of those supermax prisons where you’ll see nothing but four white walls all day, every day, for the rest of your life.”

“No, no, I’ll be down in hell with you,” Dunn said.

“Audrey Coil won’t be here with us, because Audrey Coil will get away with it. Her mother’s a senator and well connected with the deep state, they’ll take care of her, the girl who chumped you, the girl who made you a fool.”

“Get the fuck away from me . . .”

She cackled. “Your ass hurts, doesn’t it? Shot yourself right down the ass crack. What a fool. They’re going to find you with a bullet hole in your ass crack.”

He resented her hilarity, but also the vulgarity of it all. A quality woman like Rachel shouldn’t be using works like “ass-crack.”

The fact was, he did hurt after the long drive. He wasn’t bleeding, didn’t think he was infected, but he hurt.



* * *



—

RACHEL STOKES STAYED FOR A WHILE, bobbing up and down in the side window, to taunt him, the Walmart sign in the background. Dunn never slept—he didn’t think he slept—but he might have, when he thought about it, because he wasn’t as exhausted as he should have been, getting up in the dark, at five o’clock in the morning. The sun wouldn’t be up until after seven o’clock.

He pulled out his dopp kit, removed the razor, toothbrush, a travel-sized tube of Crest toothpaste, and a bar of motel soap, got a washcloth from his go-bag, went inside. In the otherwise empty men’s room, he peed, brushed his teeth, washed his face, then quickly shaved and scrubbed his armpits without taking off his shirt. Parts of the store were still closed, but the bakery was open and he could use the sugar.

He felt better with a couple of apple fritters inside him, saw a Wi-Fi symbol on his way out. He hadn’t realized that Walmarts had Wi-Fi, but they apparently did. Back in the truck, he tried to go online, but could only see the Walmart Wi-Fi sporadically. He moved the truck across the lot, closer to the store, and got a solid signal.

He spent ten minutes looking at satellite views of the Coil house, decided the best play would be to shoot from the woods across the street from the house. The woods were a couple of hundred yards across, running in a band along the road; another road ran parallel to the woods, a few hundred yards back. If he took down Coil, and whoever was with her, he should have time to make it back to the truck. From there . . . well . . .

And he took a moment to look up Tifton area schools. With a bit of research, he decided that if Audrey was going to school, as the news reports had said, it would be the Tift County High School. The Coils were Democrats and, given the various political pressures, were unlikely to be patronizing Christian schools. A public school would be the thing; and the public school’s first bell was at 7:55.



* * *



—

HE CONSIDERED THE PROBLEM of his truck and what was undoubtedly a widespread police search for it. If he left it parked at the side of a country road, a sheriff’s patrol well might run the tag. Then he’d be done.

So, forty-five minutes after he got up, he left the Walmart parking lot and headed east and north, away from Tifton.

Looking.

He thought he might have found his place twice, but both times, there was a problem. Once, too many cars; too many people. Another time, two people already outside, could have been a father and a son.

The third time, he turned up a dirt driveway with a single battered mailbox at the end of it, to find a trailer in the woods, a light on in the back—the bedroom?—and one in the kitchen. A blue Ford pickup, maybe ten years old, sat by the door. Dunn put the Sig 938 in his pocket, safety off, told himself to remember to keep his finger off the trigger—that’s what he’d forgotten when he shot himself in the ass—and got out of the truck.