Rising Tiger: A Thriller (59)

The man nodded and Nicholas headed inside. He wanted to check on Nina and grab the dogs.

Five minutes later, the garage door opened, and Nicholas pulled out in a black, off-road side-by-side vehicle. Like his van, it had been fully customized.

Argos sat in the passenger seat and Draco was in the second row. In the cargo area were a bunch of OD-green Storm Cases of various sizes.

Sutton offered to ride along in the side-by-side, but Nicholas said that he’d prefer the man drive his Bronco and that he would follow. He didn’t plan on coming straight back. Once Sutton showed him what he wanted to see, he was going to be out there for a while.

The main reason Sutton had been sent out to the little man’s estate was his human-tracking skills. He not only knew how a sniper thinks and acts, but he was also a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Army Combat Tracking School at Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona, just fifteen miles from the Mexican border.

As the men drove, both dogs stuck their heads out the lowered windows and breathed in the fresh autumn air. Nicholas had been worried about them. But seeing them now, they appeared to be fine. The vet had provided some low-level pain pills and Nina—a vet tech by training—had been keeping an eye on them. So far, so good.

Though Nicholas had had a splitting headache and nausea, after a few hours in the hospital it had passed. It had felt like fighting off one of the worst hangovers of his life. IV fluids, anti-inflammatories, and pain medication had been a godsend, but he never wanted to experience that kind of pain again. He especially didn’t want Nina or their baby to, either.

A few minutes later, when Sutton’s Bronco came to a stop, Nicholas parked nearby and, along with the dogs, dismounted.

“So,” Sutton began narrating as he walked and pointed things out, “there are a handful of things I was looking for. One, the shooter had to be able to see the target—aka you. He needed a line of sight to the house. Two, unless he time traveled, he would have arrived via some sort of vehicle, parked it, and hiked in. Based on the road system beyond your property, coupled with the view of the house, that made this area the most likely. So, this is where I started.”

“And what did you find?” asked Nicholas as they trudged deeper into the trees.

Sutton led him to a specific spot, stopped, and pointed to the ground. “I found this.”

Nicholas looked down, expecting to see something out of a movie that proved the attacker’s presence—cigarette butts, a candy wrapper, a water bottle. There was no such evidence. It just looked like moss, grass, and fallen leaves. He couldn’t see whatever it was that Sutton was trying to show him.

“Look at how this area is flatter,” the man said, crouching down to point directly at what he wanted Nicholas to take notice of. “The grass here is bent and the twigs here and here are broken.”

“I’m not doubting you,” the little man replied. “But we’ve got more deer around here than we know what to do with.”

“This wasn’t deer,” Sutton stated as he lay down in the same spot. “This was someone who had lain prone.”

“Like a sniper.”

The man nodded. “Like a sniper.”

Nicholas turned and took in the view back to the house. This was as good a place as any, he supposed.

Sutton stood back up. “I also picked up his trail. I know where he entered your property and a couple of other hide sites he considered.”

“Show me,” said Nicholas. “All of it.”





CHAPTER 36


It took Sutton an additional twenty minutes to show him everything. After that, Nicholas thanked him and told him that he would be back up to the house in a little bit.

As the Bronco drove off, the little man began unpacking the Storm Cases from the cargo area of his side-by-side. It was hard, taxing work, but it needed to be done.

By the time he and the dogs returned to the house, a truck and a team from the NSA were waiting in the driveway. Putting his side-by-side away in the garage, he then showed the team inside, grabbed a Gatorade, and accompanied them upstairs.

The master bedroom not only had his-and-her bathrooms, but also gigantic his-and-her walk-in closets. In fact, the term walk-in was an understatement. You could have driven a truck through each of them.

Nicholas had used the majority of his closet to set up an at-home SCIF. Because of its steel paneling, it doubled as a safe room. He had decided that was where they would install the experimental shielding. If he could keep Nina largely confined to the bedroom, and something did happen, it would be a short hop to get into the SCIF.

The material the NSA provided looked like the Mylar blankets handed out to marathon runners and disaster victims, except that it was gold, rather than silver.

No matter how many questions he asked the team of geeks installing it, it was obvious that they had been instructed not to reveal anything about the makeup of the material.

They measured, noted, and photographed every square inch that was installed. At the end, many hours later, he was required to sign a ton of documents before they packed up their kits and left.

Once they were gone, Nina stepped into the closet and studied their handiwork.

“It looks like a bunch of crafters blew through here with a boxcar full of gold leaf and a couple dozen hair dryers,” she said.

Nicholas chuckled. Next to her sky-high IQ and tough-as-nails attitude, he loved her sense of humor. “Baller that I am,” he joked, “rose gold is much more my style, but if we need this and it works, color isn’t going to matter.”