The cooler was well stocked, or had been well stocked earlier in the day. Now there were two bottles of water and a 32oz Gatorade.
“Cool Blue?” Nova said, extracting the bottle of Gatorade from the cooler. “Seriously?”
The man said nothing.
Nova shook the bottle and cracked the top and took a sip. He looked at the bottle again, tilting his head back and forth as he smacked his lips. “Not bad, I guess.”
The man still said nothing. He just sat there on the ground, his hands bound behind his back, his ankles bound together, glaring up at Nova.
“So what’s the XM2010 for?” Nova asked.
The man said nothing.
Nova sat on a large rock across from the man and took a long swallow of the Gatorade. “We can sit here all day if you want. I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
The man said nothing.
Nova had already searched him. Besides a set of keys—one of which belonged to the dirt bike, Nova figured—was a cell phone. The cell phone was locked, and Nova knew better than to ask the man for the passcode.
“Parrot Spur is an interesting town. I’ve never seen so many ex-military in one place outside an Army base. Your sheriff told me the men work at the factory in Townsend, but a waitress over there says otherwise. Who do you think was lying?”
The man said nothing. Nova wasn’t surprised. He pretty much figured this was how things were going to go, but he wanted to try to reason with the man before he took more extreme measures.
“Look, I get it. You’re a tough guy. I know, because I’m a tough guy. You hear about what happened at the bar last night? Maybe you were even there. I’m the guy who took on three Marines. Yeah, I know they were Marines, just as I know you’re a Marine, too.”
Nothing. Not even a slight widening of the eyes. The man was a blank slate.
“We could play the whole intimidation game, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t lead to much. We could even ratchet it up to torture, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t lead to much, either. I mean, maybe after a while you would break, but who’s to say what you told me then would even be the truth? Fact is, I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be in California by now, but my car—”
Nothing had changed in the man’s eyes, but it didn’t need to. Pieces of the puzzle were already starting to fall into place. Part of it was realizing that the faint noise he heard was the traffic out on the highway over the ridge. The other part was the XM2010.
Nova looked at the man. He looked at the hut, where inside the sniper rifle rested in its case. He looked up at the ridge.
Nova said, “Tell me I’m reaching.”
Finally, a slight change in expression, the man frowning because he didn’t know what Nova meant. Of course he didn’t. Nova hadn’t spoken his theory out loud yet.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Nova stood up and started toward the top of the ridge. The moment he looked out at the highway snaking across the desert he knew this was the right place. He recognized the spot, farther down near the asphalt. He couldn’t be one hundred percent certain on the location, but it was pretty close to where he had broken down last night. First one tire, then the second, both going flat on the same side of the car. The side facing the ridge on which Nova now stood.
Nova took a final swallow of the Gatorade while he climbed back down to the hut. He tossed the empty bottle aside and again sat down on the rock.
“Okay, so you’re running some kind of scam, is that it? You sit up here and take out cars—expensive ones, I’m guessing, cars with only one person inside—and you force them to break down in the middle of nowhere. They try to use their phones to call for help, but there is no service. What—you guys use some kind of cell blocker? Yeah, I guess you would have to. It’s the only thing that makes sense. So then with no way to call for help, the driver doesn’t know how far the next town up is, so they head back to Parrot Spur on foot. End up at the diner or the bar, get a room at the motel. They might want to call for a tow immediately, but someone feeds them a bullshit story about how the mechanic shop in Townsend is short-staffed and they won’t get to it any time soon. Maybe even the sheriff helpfully drives them into town and sets them up with a sweet deal on a used car. All the while the driver calls his insurance and reports the car stolen, because while he’s been in Parrot Spur, someone else has come along and picked up the car. In fact …”
Nova shook his head slowly, then laughed.
“Goddamn. It was that first tractor-trailer that passed me, wasn’t it? There are two other tractor-trailers in town, but none of those men are actual truckers. Which begs the question, just what are all of them doing in town? This little scam you have running here stealing cars, it’s impressive, but it doesn’t take a whole town to pull it off. You probably have people paid off in Townsend, and maybe even people at the insurance companies, because if so many cars start breaking down in one particular spot in Nevada and end up stolen, that will raise a lot of eyebrows. Unless those reports get filed in a special folder or something, am I right?”
The man said nothing, but he didn’t need to say anything for Nova to know he was right. He might not have all the details straight, but they were enough to paint a solid enough picture of recent events. Except, the more he thought about it, the scam raised more questions than answers. Especially the amount of ex-military men in town. That number was still bugging him.
In his pocket, his cell phone vibrated.
Nova went to reach for it when he realized that it wasn’t his cell phone—his iPhone had since lost battery power—but the man’s cell phone. He pulled it out, and despite the fact the phone was locked, a text message could easily be read on the screen.
COME TO MINE ASAP.
“What’s at the mine?” Nova asked, looking up just in time to see the rock flying at his face.
It struck him in the temple and knocked him back. He lost his balance and fell off the rock, nearly fell down the incline but caught himself with his foot against the rock he had been sitting on. Pulling himself back up, he saw the man had broken the zip-tie keeping his wrists bound—probably wore it down on a rock until it snapped—and was currently hopping toward the hut. Nova scrambled back to his feet and ran forward just as the man reached the nail gun. He bent and picked it up and aimed it at Nova as Nova charged forward. Just as the man squeezed the trigger, Nova ducked, leaned to the left, then threw himself at the man as he went to fire the nail gun again.
They went right into the steel hut, collapsing the wall, bringing down the roof, the two portable fans tipping over and blowing dirt everywhere.
The man tried to bring up the nail gun but Nova knocked it from his hands and punched him in the face. The man pushed Nova off of him and tried to stand up, but he was at a disadvantage with his ankles bound like they were and fell back down. But he landed near the rifle case, and immediately went to open it. By that point Nova was back on his feet. He saw what the man intended to do. He stepped forward and grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and pulled him to his feet. The man took another swing at Nova. Nova ducked it and planted a right cross to the man’s jaw. The man stumbled back, his ankles still bound, trying to keep his balance. He teetered on the edge of the incline for an instant, swinging his arms to stay upright, but gravity had other ideas and he tumbled backward.
Nova took his time making it to the edge of the incline. The last thing he wanted to do was continue this fight. He was tired and he was cranky and he was thirsty again. He didn’t want to kill the man, but it was starting to look more and more like he would have no other choice.
But then he looked over the incline and saw he didn’t have to do anything. The man had landed headfirst on a boulder thirty feet below. Judging by the awkward angle of the man’s head and shoulder, his neck had been snapped. Blood was beginning to pool around his head. His eyes were still open, staring blankly up at the sky.
“Damn,” Nova said. “And just when we were becoming friends.”
He turned back to the collapsed hut. He opened the rifle case, checked the rifle and the bullets and the rest of the equipment just to be safe. He closed the case and picked it up, along with the canvas bag, and started back toward the trail when he remembered the cooler and grabbed the two bottles of water. Then with everything bundled together, he started down the trail to the dirt bike, barely even glancing at the dead man as he passed him.