Dead Watch

taking it slow again. One of the guys moves my car, dumps it in Lexington. Nobody would ever know.”
    “What if there are three or four of them?”
    “That would be another problem,” he said. “But this would be murder, so there won’t be. They’ll try to keep it as tight as they can. Could be only one guy. A pro that they bring in for the job.”
    “I’m worried that we’re overconfident,” Madison said.
    “You keep saying that. But with this kind of deal, you do the intelligence and you make your play,” Jake said.
    “I hope you’re not fantasizing that you’re back in Afghanistan.”
    “So do I. Fantasy could get us killed.”
    While Madison unpacked the gear bags, Jake figured out the game-spotter cameras. They were cheap digital cameras with flashes, in camouflaged plastic, meant to be posted along game trails to check for passing deer. They worked on infrared motion-sensing triggers, and had been around for twenty years, long enough to become reliable. He put batteries in them and left them on the table.
    “We’ve got walkie-talkies like these at the farm,” Madison said. Jake had two Motorola walkie-talkies in his hunting gear.
    “Put new batteries in and we’ll check to make sure the channels are synced,” Jake said.
    “What if somebody hears them from the outside? The range is pretty long . . .”
    “Not here. We’re too deep in the valley. When we’re turkey hunting, if we go over the top of the bluffs, we can’t pick up a call from the cabin. And you can’t call out from the cabin on your cell phone. You have to be up on top.”
    “Okay.” She glanced at her watch. “You better change.”
    He got into his cool-weather camo, got his sleeping bag, put three power snacks and two bottles of springwater in his hip pockets. He took a full box of shells, loading four into the rifle, the rest into the elastic loops of the cartridge holders on the camo jacket; he’d never used the loops before, and fumbled the shells getting them in.
    Nervous. And getting a little high on the coming combat.
    Madison had taken the shotgun out of the case and was looking it over. “It’s just about like mine,” she said.
    As Jake checked a flashlight, he watched her handling it. She knew what she was doing. “Snap it a few times, then load it up.”
    She dry-fired it, pointing it across the room at a framed photo of the hunting group, using a trapshooter’s stance. Satisfied, she shoved some shells into the magazine.
    “If one of them comes through the door, keep pulling the trigger until he goes down.” She nodded, and Jake said, “I’m going to run outside. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    He slung the rifle over his shoulder and picked up the game-trail spotters and the flashlight. If they were out there . . . but they wouldn’t have been able to move that fast. If they’d moved deliberately, but hadn’t done anything weird, like rent a helicopter, they’d arrive in perhaps four hours. He had time.
    Outside, the night was cool, damp. The leaves would be quiet; he would have preferred a crisper, drier night. He carried the game cameras around to the west side of the house, the side he wouldn’t be able to see, and began tying them into trees between the cabin and the pond. If they did come in from the west, they’d trip the infrared flashes, and he’d see the flashes . . .
    Unless, of course, a deer came in. Then he’d get a false alarm. But the grasses on the open slopes around the cabin didn’t pull many deer in. He’d have to hope for the best.

    Back in the cabin, they synced the radios. Jake switched his to “vibrate” and said, “When you get up in the morning, turn the TV on, first thing. Change channels every few minutes, but news channels. Leave the one window open just an inch, so they can hear it. Keep the blinds down, except the one over the kitchen sink. Leave that half up. When I give you four chirps, that means . . .”
    “Walk past the window,” she said.
    Jake nodded. “Not too fast, not too slow. You don’t want to give them time to fire a shot, but you want them to see your body. For Christ’s sake, don’t look outside—they might see your face and take off. If they just see the flannel shirt, your arm, all they’ll pick up is the movement.”
    She touched her lip with her tongue. She was nervous, too. “Okay.”
    “If they get me, then they’ll have to come after you,” Jake said. “That’ll only happen if there are several of them.