Mortal Prey

all the way to Birmingham, and then I-20 east to Anniston.
    She started late in the afternoon and was still driving at dawn. She listened to a St. Louis Cardinals game heading down to Nashville, thinking about those times in the liquor warehouse, about a million years earlier, when the Cards games always ran in the background, and she, no baseball fan, knew every man on the roster.
    She lost the Cardinals outside of Nashville, and poked around the radio looking for some decent country, but that was hard to come by. She finally found a local station along the Alabama line, playing a long string of LeAnn Rimes, including “Blue,” one of Rinker’s favorites. When that station faded, she spent the rest of the night dialing around the radio for more good places to listen.
    At 6 A.M ., a little beat-up, but pleasantly so—she always liked road trips—she checked into a cheap motel called Tapley’s, and when asked how many there’d be, she said, “Well, my husband’s probably coming over during the day, he’s a sergeant in the Army, but I’m not sure if he’ll be staying the night.”
    The lady clerk looked at her with a touch of warmth in her eyes and said, “We’ll put you down for one, and if that changes, honey, just let me know.”
    “I’ll do that, and thanks,” Rinker said. “I’d give you a credit card, but I don’t know if it’d work. He’s probably put a bass boat on it. I’ll just give you cash, if that’s okay.”
    “That’d be fine.”
     
    SHE CALLED WAYNE MCCALLUM at eight o’clock, and got him on the first ring: “Sergeant McCallum, ordnance.”
    “Wayne George McCallum. How are you?” She used her best whiskey Rinker voice.
    There was a pause, then: “Oh, shit.”
    “I need to talk.”
    “I wouldn’t doubt it, but things are pretty hectic right now.” His voice was casual, with an underlying layer of stress.
    “Did you take that twelve-step I heard about, or are you still running down to Biloxi on the weekends?”
    “I sure as shit ain’t took no twelve-step,” he said. McCallum had a fondness for craps.
    “So come on. I got something you need, and you got something I need.”
    “I can’t talk right now. Could you call me at my other number, in about five minutes?” He gave her a number.
    “I’ll call,” she said. She waited while he ran out to a pay phone, gave him an extra minute, and dialed. He picked up on the first ring. “I can get you two good ones, equipped. Three thousand.”
    “I don’t need them. I need something special.”
    “Special.”
    “Real special.”
    “We better talk. See you at the usual?”
    “The usual.”
     
    SHE GOT FOUR hours of sleep, and a little after noon, got cleaned up, changed into jeans, running shoes, and a short-sleeved shirt, and clipped one of her pistols into a pull-down fanny pack. Behind the pistol she stuffed a brick of fifty-dollar bills, wrapped with rubber bands.
    When she was ready, and feeling a little adrenaline, she headed south to Talladega, then east into the mountains of the Talladega National Forest. She stopped at a wayside park, where a hiking trail started off into the woods. She sat in her car for a moment, watching, then retrieved the fanny pack from under the front seat and strapped it on, with the pack in front. She also dug out one of her cell phones, checked to make sure it was the right one, and carried it with her.
     
    FOR YEARS , Wayne McCallum had been her main source of silenced nine-millimeter pistols, and she’d dealt with him twenty times. They’d once had a long talk about meeting places, places to talk, places to exchange equipment for money. They had agreed that cleverness was its own enemy. If you met in a crowded public place, which was one theory on how you do it—the crowd bought you protection from the person you were meeting—and if somebody was onto you, you’d never see them coming. If you could just see them coming, there was always a chance. A lonely spot, but still technically public, where you wouldn’t seem suspicious just for being there, was the best solution.
    A hiking trail was perfect, as long as she had her best friend along…with a full magazine and a spare.
    She climbed out of the wayside park, up the hiking trail, then looped up a secondary track to a scenic overlook. When she got to the top, she found it empty. She had, in fact, met McCallum a half-dozen times at the overlook, and, except for McCallum, had never encountered another soul. The overlook