Dead Watch

emergency. I’d call you from outside.”
    “All right. Got a pen? It’s 540-555-6475.”
    “540-555-64 . . .”
    “6475. Don’t use your cell phone, either. We don’t want any tracks that the feds can find later. For one thing, that might drag Billy into it, just for loaning me the place.”
    “What if I have to call you, and you’re not there?”
    “I’ll be there. Or I’ll be on my way back here. I’m gonna get up early and work on it all day; I won’t be going for a walk in the woods.”
    In the doorway she kissed him a last time and whispered, “How was that?”
    “Perfect.” Though he wasn’t sure about that: some of it sounded like dialogue from a bad novel.
    He left her in the doorway, headed back down the walk, tapping along with his cane. He was twenty feet down the walk when he heard a woman’s voice calling, “Sir? Sir, I’m with the New York Times .”
    He thought, Damnit, and turned back, scurried up the front steps to the house, rang the bell. Madison appeared at the door, puzzled, and Jake stepped inside, held her close, and whispered, “The Times still has the place staked out. I’ll give you a single ring when it’s clear.”
    “Okay. I’ll start turning out lights.”

    Back outside, the Times reporter was standing on the sidewalk, carefully outside the property line. As Jake came down the front walk, she called, “Sir, could you tell me who you are?”
    “I do paperwork for Miz Bowe and the law firm. You’ll have to call Johnson Black, I’m sure you have his number.”
    “If you . . .”
    “Miss, if I said one more word, they’d fire my ass. Think of the guilt you’d feel.”
    “I’d manage somehow,” she said, but she was smiling at him.
    “Call Johnson Black.” He glanced back at the house. “Miz Bowe is going to bed. If you’re planning to stay all night, I hope your car has a heater.”
    Inside the house, the lights were going out.

20 

    Jake cruised the neighborhood for half an hour before the Times reporter left. He saw her car pulling out of its parking space, followed the taillights until she turned left at the bottom of the hill, eased up to the stop sign, then far enough out into the street to make sure that she’d kept going. When she was out of sight, he touched the speed dial on his cell phone, let it ring once, then turned the car around. Madison came down the side of the house carrying her overnight bag.
    “I hate doing this,” Jake said when she got in the car. “This is way more dangerous than stealing that laptop. Maybe we just oughta call the cops.”
    “No. If it’s the wrong guy’s DNA in Madison, we’d never find him. And we’d look like morons for pointing the FBI at Goodman. We’d have no credibility left at all—and I don’t have that much now.”
    “But hanging you out there . . .”
    “I won’t be hanging out. Besides, the car’s a problem that you can’t solve without me.”
    “If it weren’t for that . . .”
    “Did you bring me the shotgun?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then drive.”

    They got out of Washington in a hurry, stopped at a Wal-Mart and picked up a box of contractor cleanup bags, kitchen gloves, and four infrared game-spotter cameras. From there it was west and south on Interstates 66 and 81, stars out, listening to classic rock on satellite radio, lights sparkling above them on the mountains as they drove down the length of the Shenandoah. As they went past Staunton, Madison said, “We’re getting close?”
    “Another half hour.”
    They could see the lights of Lexington when they cut right into the mountains, good roads narrowing to twisting black-topped lanes. Jake stopped at a dark place, a hillside looming to their left in the starlight, a deep valley on the right. “This is the trailhead for the park,” he said. “It’s three miles across the hill down to Billy’s place. If they come in navigating with maps, I think it’s about 90 percent that they’ll leave their car here. It’s what I’d do. They’ve got a straight shot across the hill and they’d come down on top of us. If they’re good in the woods, nobody would ever see them.”
    “We can’t be locked into this, though,” Madison said. “We’ve got to work out some options.”
    “Yeah. They could leave their car along the road, but the problem is, it might attract attention. Might have a cop note the tag number. There’s really no other place to park, and if you put it back in the woods, then it might really