four members of the Camel Club closed their eyes.

When they reopened them, the four men continued to stare transfixed as the gun and bottle were placed near the body. A plastic baggie was taken out of the knapsack carried by the other man, and this was laid next to the murder weapon. Finally, a piece of folded paper was placed in the pocket of the dead man’s windbreaker.

Finished, the two men looked around the area even as the Camel Club members shrank farther back in the bushes. A minute later the killers trudged off. As soon as the sounds of their footfalls disappeared, the Camel Club let out a collective sigh of relief. Holding his finger to his lips, Stone quietly led the way out of their hiding place and into the clearing.

Reuben squatted down next to the body. He shook his head and said in a very low voice, “At least he was killed instantly. As if that somehow makes up for being murdered.” He looked at the nearly empty bottle. “Dewar’s. Looks like they got the poor bastard drunk so he couldn’t fight back.”

“Is there any ID on the body?” Stone asked.

“This is a crime scene,” Caleb said shakily. “We shouldn’t touch anything.”

“He’s right,” Reuben agreed. He glanced over at Milton, who was making frantic motions with his hands as he sped silently through his OCD ritual. Reuben sighed. “We should get the hell out of here, Oliver, is what we should do.”

Stone knelt down beside him and spoke quietly but urgently. “This was an execution made to look like suicide, Reuben. Those were professional killers, and I’d like to know who the target was and what he knew that led to his death.” As he was speaking, he wrapped a handkerchief pulled from his pocket around his hand, searched the dead man’s pockets and slid out a wallet. He nimbly flipped it open, and they all gazed at the driver’s license in the see-through plastic. Reuben pulled out his lighter and flicked it on so Stone could read the information on the license.

“Patrick Johnson,” Stone read. “He lived in Bethesda.” Stone put the wallet back, searched the other pocket and pulled out the piece of paper the killer had placed there. By the flickering flame of the lighter he read the contents of the letter in a soft voice.

“‘I’m sorry. It’s all too much. I can’t live with this anymore. This is the only way. I’m sorry. So sorry.’ And it’s signed Patrick Johnson.”

Caleb slowly took his bowler hat off in respect for the dead and mouthed a prayer.

Stone continued, “The writing is very legible. I suppose the police will assume it was written before he supposedly drank himself into a suicidal stupor.”

Reuben said, “He said he was sorry right before they killed him.”

Stone shook his head. “I think he was speaking about something else he was sorry for. The note’s words are just a subterfuge, a typical suicide’s last plea.”

Stone put the note back. As he was doing so, his hand nudged against something else in the dead man’s pocket. He pulled out a small red lapel pin and squinted at it in the darkness.

“What’s that?” Reuben asked, holding his lighter closer.

Caleb said in a hushed whisper, “What if they come back?”

Stone put the pin back and felt Johnson’s clothes. “They’re soaked through.”

Reuben pointed to the plastic baggie. “What do you make of that?”

Stone thought for a moment. “I think I understand its purpose and the soaked clothes as well. But Caleb’s right, we should leave.”

They set off and then realized that Milton wasn’t with them. They turned back and found him crouched over the dead man counting, with his hand reaching over the body.

“Uh, Milton, we really need to leave,” Caleb said urgently.

However, Milton was apparently so traumatized that he couldn’t stop counting.

“Oh, for chrissakes,” Reuben moaned. “Why don’t we all just bloody well count together until they come back and give us some bullets to suck on?”

Stone put a steadying hand on Reuben’s arm and stepped forward next to Milton. He looked down at Patrick Johnson’s face. He was young, though death had already begun to hollow him. Stone knelt and placed his hand gently on Milton’s shoulder and said quietly, “We can do nothing for him now, Milton. And the comfort you take in your counting, the safety and security that you’re striving for, can be defeated if those two men come back.” He added bluntly, “They have guns, Milton, we don’t.”

Milton halted his ritual, stifled a sob and said in a quivering voice, “I don’t like violence, Oliver.” Milton clutched his knapsack closer to his chest and then pointed at the corpse. “I don’t like that.”

“I know, Milton. None of us do.”

Stone and Milton rose together. With a sigh of relief Reuben followed them to the path leading to their boat.

Warren Peters, who’d fired the shot that killed Patrick Johnson, was walking along the trail back to their dinghy when he stopped short.

“Shit!” he whispered.

“What?” Tyler Reinke asked as he nervously looked around. “Police boat?”

“No, almost a big mistake.” Peters scooped up some dirt and pebbles in his hand. “When we dunked him, it cleaned his shoe soles off. If he walked here through the woods, his soles wouldn’t be clean. The FBI won’t miss that.”

The two men hurried back along the path and over to the body. Peters squatted down next to the murdered man’s shoes and pressed dirt and pebbles into the soles.

“Good catch,” Reinke said.

“I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened if I’d blown that.” He finished his task and started to rise, but his gaze caught on something.

“Son of a bitch!” Peters exclaimed between clenched teeth. He pointed to the note he had pressed into the victim’s pocket: A corner of it was sticking out. “I shoved that all the way in because I didn’t want it to look too obvious. So why’s it visible now?” He pushed the note back in the pocket and looked at his partner searchingly.

“Could an animal have taken a go at the body?”

“After a few minutes? And why would an animal go after paper instead of flesh?” He rose, pulled a flashlight from his pocket and checked the stone floor.

Reinke said, “You must’ve made a mistake with the paper. You probably didn’t push it in as far as you thought.”

Peters continued to search the area and then stiffened.

“What now?” his companion asked impatiently.

“Listen, do you hear that?”

Reinke remained still and silent and then his mouth gaped.

“Somebody running. That way!” He pointed to the right, down one of the trails in the opposite direction they had come.

The two men pulled their weapons and sprinted toward the sound.

CHAPTER

10

STONE AND THE OTHERS HAD JUST jumped into their boat and pushed off. The fog was now dense enough to make navigation tricky. They were perhaps ten feet from the island in the Little Channel when the two men burst out of the trees and saw them.

“Pull as hard as you can and keep your face turned down,” Stone said to Reuben, who needed no such prompting. His broad shoulders and thick arms moved with a Herculean effort, and the little boat sprang away from the shore.

Stone turned to the others in the boat and whispered, “Don’t let them see your faces. Caleb, take off your hat!” They all immediately bent low, and Caleb swept off his bowler and jammed it between his quivering knees. Milton had started counting the minute he climbed onto the boat. The two men on shore took aim at their quarry, but the fog made their targets very elusive. They both fired, but their shots splattered harmlessly into the water a good foot from the boat.

“Pull, Reuben, pull,” a terrified Caleb gasped as he ducked even farther down.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Reuben snapped, sweat trickling down his face.

The pursuers took careful aim and fired twice more. One slug found its mark, and splintered wood flew up a

nd hit Stone in the right hand. The blood trickled down his fingers and onto the boat’s gunwale. He quickly staunched the flow with the same handkerchief he’d used to search the body of Patrick Johnson.

“Oliver!” a frantic Milton called out.

“I’m all right,” Stone answered. “Just stay down!”

The two gunmen, realizing the futility of their attack, raced away.

“They’re going to get their boat,” Stone warned.

“Well, then we have a bit of a problem, because their boat has a motor,” Reuben retorted. “I’m going as fast as I can, but there’s not much gas left in my tank.”

Stone pulled on Caleb’s sleeve. “Caleb, you take one oar and I’ll take the other.” Reuben moved out of the way, and the two men rowed with all their strength.

Tags: David Baldacci Camel Club Thriller
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