Mortal Prey

was nothing more than a circle of rocks around a patch of beaten earth, on the edge of a steep hill. There was a good view back toward Talledega, and no sign of recent use: nothing but old cigarette filters scattered around the rocks, and a couple of weather-rotted clumps of toilet paper back in the bushes. She expected the filters would last until the next ice age—longer than the rocks, anyway.
    McCallum arrived precisely at one o’clock, driving an older Cadillac. He’d always driven a Caddy, because that’s what men like him drove, and there’d always be a set of good golf clubs in the trunk. He climbed out, smiled up at where he thought she was, and came puffing up the trail, a fat, red-faced man in civilian clothes, way out of shape. Welcome to today’s Army, Rinker thought.
    “We gotta find some goddamn place flat,” he said, as he wheezed into the overlook. He was close enough that she could smell his breath, and it smelled like Sen-Sen. She wondered if they still made it.
    “Or you gotta take off some weight,” Rinker said. She smiled. “How are you?”
    “A hell of a lot better than you,” McCallum said. He looked her over, then said, “After all that shit up in Minnesota, I figured the next time I saw you, we’d both be in hell.”
    “Not there yet,” she said.
    “If you don’t stay the fuck away from St. Louis, you will be,” he said.
    “Got a couple more things to do before I take off.” She pulled the top off her fanny pack, let the pistol unfold, then dug behind it for the brick of fifties. She tossed it to him, and he caught it, glanced at the denomination on the top bill, and said, “This is a lot.”
    She held up the cell phone. “Remember you told me about that Israeli thing?”
    He laughed, and said, “You’re shitting me.” He ran two hands through his short hair, then scrubbed at his scalp like one of the Three Stooges—Rinker could never remember their names, but it was the fat one. “You’re not shitting me.”
    “I’m not. Can you really do it?” she asked.
    “Hell, yes. I’ve been itching to.” Jeez, Rinker thought, his eyes are bright. “Banged off a couple myself,” he said, “up here in the hills, just to make sure it works. It works. It works beautiful.”
    “How about the plastic? Can they get back to you?”
    “It’s all civilian. They could never bring it back here. Back to me.”
    “How long to do it?”
    “Couple hours. I could have it tonight,” he said. He was getting excited. Aroused. “I mean, it’s real easy. ’Bout everything you need is already built into the phone. You need one chip and the plastic.”
    “It’d be a favor, Wayne,” Rinker said. She gave him her number-three smile. “The quicker the better.”
     
    SHE DROVE BACK to Anniston, leaving after he did, taking a different route, checking her back trail. At the motel, she slept the rest of the afternoon, and spent the early evening watching television. At eight o’clock, she drove out to an interstate gas station and a telephone. McCallum picked up on the first ring.
    “We going out, or what?” she asked.
    “I’m ready, honey-bun. Tell me where.”
    “How about Boots?” Boots was an Army bar. She’d been there once before, in the parking lot.
    “See you there.”
    Again, she was there before he was. That was part of the deal. Though she had little faith in the idea that she could spot cops, she was virtually certain that McCallum wouldn’t turn her in. He’d helped her too many times, and Alabama had primitive ideas about the proper punishment for murder.
    When the Caddy rolled in, she watched for five minutes, then decided she’d buy it; she’d seen nothing that worried her. She rolled down the hill into the parking lot, up close to the Cadillac, and dropped the passenger-side window. Neon lightning rolled off the Caddy’s hood, reflecting the on-and-off “Boots” sign overhead. McCallum saw her, got out of his car, stepped over, climbed into the passenger seat, and fumbled the cell phone out of his jacket pocket.
    “Here’s the phone,” he said. He sounded eager to get rid of it, or to please her—like a child giving a gift to a teacher. “If you was to take it apart, and knew a lot about phones, you might find the plastic. If you didn’t, and if you just looked into it, you’d never see it.”
    “What happens if I call out?”
    “Nothing. It’s still a perfectly good phone. But I’ll tell you what, you don’t want to call out to