The Twelve Stones (16 page)

“
Now, I take exception to that,” Scott said, feigning offense. “I know I’m not the best looking guy in the world but I think it’s more than fair to assume I might have someone in bed with me. I mean, sure I’m in sorta a dry spell right now…”

Alex rolled his eyes
.
H
e
didn’t have time for Scott’s particular brand of humor right now.

“
Scott
,
listen carefully to me right now
:
if you are being held hostage and can’t talk freely
,
say
,
‘Are you on drugs?’ and hang up the phone.”

“
What the hell
,
buddy?
Are
you on drugs?” Scott sat up in his bed
,
grasping for his eyeglasses. As he placed them on his face, he looked at the clock on the other side of the room. “Alex, it’s two-thirty in the morning, what’s the problem?”

“
Are you being held hostage right now? Yes or no?” Alex asked urgently.

“
No
!
Jesus man, what’s going on?” Scott said
,
beginning to worry
.
“Where are you? You said you needed help?”

Alex sighed
.
H
e
didn’t want to explain over the phone.

“
Just come down and let me in the front gate
.
I’ll explain when I get up there.”

“
Fair enough
,
buddy, but I hope you at least brought something to snack on
.
I get hungry when woken after midnight.”

The phone clicked off, and Alex waited for his friend to come down to the first floor. A few moments later, a bleary
-
eyed and unshaven Scott shuffled out
,
wearing a blue terrycloth robe
,
which thankfully covered all the important bits and pieces. Alex moved quickly and quietly behind his friend, careful to stay in the shadows lest anyone see him.

“
Scott
,
”
Alex called out in a low voice
.
I
n retrospect
,
Alex considered, was probably not the best idea.

Scott jumped, screaming loudly. He swung wildly
,
catching Alex off guard
and
knocking him flat to the ground.

Rubbing his chin, Alex grimaced slightly and regained his composure. Thanks to the stone hanging around his neck, the pain had been non-existent, but no matter how magical the stone might be, it didn’t help the bruise to his ego.

Scott laughed in surprise
when he recognized Alex
.

“
Sorry about that
,
buddy,” Scott said
,
proffering his hand out.

Alex smiled broadly. It had been a long time since he had seen his best friend. He was glad to see that some things never changed
–
specifically Scott’s sense of humor and atrocious dressing style. His friend had undergone something of a renaissance after high school and during college
,
whe
n
he had discovered the weight room. The hours he had spent in there had helped to fill out his formerly narrow frame nicely.

“
It’s been a long time
,
bro!” Scott said
,
lifting Alex
back to his feet
. “Let’s get you upstairs and into a nice drink.”

Alex smiled and
accepted Scott’s assistance off the ground
. “After the day I’ve had, believe me, I could use one.”

Chapter Thirteen

Geoffrey Tate did not have to travel far from the burning sheriff
’s
station to find the abandoned Jeep parked on the side of the road.

In fact, it was only a few hundred feet away from where Kline and Tate had first encountered the father
-
and
-
son pair on the
m
esa above. Glancing at the solid geodesic dome structure that was now covering the top of the mountain, Geoffrey pulled up next to the abandoned
J
eep, not waiting for his vehicle to come to a stop before putting it in gear and jumping down. One of Kline’s workers, the man who had found the
J
eep, nervously flicked his cigarette onto the desert road and blew out
a
lungful of tobacco smoke. The bald man approaching them had left strict instructions not to touch the vehicle until he had arrived. They had
,
of course
,
complied with
his
instructions. You didn’t last long enough working for Kline if you didn’t.

“
Did you touch anything?” Geoffrey growled to the two men.

“
No
,
sir,” the nervous curly
-
haired man said. “We were walking back after we reported our truck stolen
,
and found this
J
eep right here in the middle of the desert
,
and…” he trailed off as he watched Geoffrey look closer at the vehicle, uncertain if he was even listening.

“
Did you find any keys, on the tires, or underneath a rock nearby perhaps?” Geoffrey asked impatiently.

“
Ah, no
,
sir.” The
curly-haired
man took off his ball cap and wiped his brow. Despite being it being quite cold in the desert during the night,
the bald man still had a way of making him sweat
. “Like I said, we were just walking back to camp, found this
,
and figured we should call it in.”

“
We heard over the radio we should be looking for abandoned vehicles,” the second man added in an attempt to be helpful.

Geoffrey nodded absently, ignoring the two men, as he began to examine the interior of the Jeep. He was determined to find something, anything he could use to give him something on the man who had given them so much trouble. Failure was not something Geoffrey was comfortable with.

On his thirteenth birthday, Geoffrey’s father had rewarded him with the first weapon he had ever clutched – an incredibl
y
fine hunting rifle. The next weekend, Geoffrey found himself on a trip with his father, deep in the woods, stalking a four
-
point buck in the wilds of Wyoming.

Unfortunately, with the inexperience of youth and unfamiliarity with his new weapon, the first shot he ever took at another living creature missed any vital organs, tearing instead through the buck’s shoulder. Wounded, the deer escaped, and Geoffrey was unable to get a second shot off in time. Disappointed in his son, Geoffrey’s father told him that
,
while hunting, such things were bound to happen. Perhaps next year
,
the boy would be more accurate.

Filled with anger and disgust
at
the failure to kill his prey, Geoffrey slipped away from the camp long after his father had fallen asleep
,
intent on tracking and killing the wounded animal.

The teenage Geoffrey Tate spent nearly two days living in the woods
alone and
stalking his wounded prey. Late
i
n
the second evening, he found the wounded buck watering itself on a small mountain stream. The buck looked up at Geoffrey before the boy shot the animal in the neck, the first of many kills to come in Geoffrey’s young and violent life.

Geoffrey returned to the present as he looked around the truck for anything that might indicate a trap of some sort. He had underestimated the young man once before. There would not be a second occasion.

He
began to realize he needed to shift his thinking and hunt the man from the desert in the same way he had hunted that wounded buck from long ago. He was sure the young man was unlikely to return to his Jeep
;
it was too
exposed, and too likely to have been found by now. The first lesson his father had taught him was never
to
underestimate his opponents.

The corollary to that, and second lesson his father had taught him, was that indeed, sometimes, your prey was
indeed
just that dumb.

Finding no obvious traps around the abandoned vehicle, Geoffrey approached the passenger
-
side window,
peering
carefully into the cabin.

Shining his flashlight into the Jeep, Geoffrey spotted several odds and ends that usually accompanied long road trips. Empty water and soda bottles, discarded food containers, and camping supplies were conspicuously present in the rear.

Geoffrey backed his face away from the window and raised the butt of his nine millimeter. He swung his fist swiftly, bringing the butt of his pistol down on the tinted glass window. The glass shattered, falling all across the seat and floor.

Geoffrey used his pistol’s barrel to brush the glass that did not immediately break away from the window into the cabin. He reached in and opened the glove box
,
searching for the car’s registration papers.

Riffling through the glove box, Geoffrey didn’t find much
of interest
at first. There were a few receipts from gas stations in Los Angeles, and one dated last night from a gas station only a few miles away.

Geoffrey grunted in satisfaction at this revelation. The search area for this man just shrunk down quite a bit. It was likely that the man and
his father
lived fairly close. Geoffrey dug deeper through the glove box
,
hoping to find the registration card which would reveal the man’s address. After a few minutes of searching, he scored.

“
Mr. Ted McCray of 473 Oak Avenue, Onyx, CA...” he said in an even tone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Geoffrey walked away from the car and opened his satellite phone
,
dialing Kline.
After only one ring
, the voice on the other side
picked up.
He
sounded annoyed, if not expectant.

“
Yes?”

“
I found the pair’s
J
eep
. The registration says the owner lives up in the Onyx. I’ll need one of the choppers if I have any hope of catching him before he gets to someone who will believe him.” Geoffrey paused as he weighed his next request. These were serious times, and it required some serious firepower, more than any poorly trained local might provide.

“
I’d like to meet our pro team in San Bernardino and go up together.”

Kline didn’t hesitate. “Whatever resources you require will be made available to you.”

“
Thank you
,
sir. I believe it’s likely that he’ll retreat to familiar ground before he’ll attempt to go to the police again.”

On the other end of the line
,
Kline rubbed his hands together as Geoffrey reported to him. The night was beginning to look up.

“
Mr. Tate, I cannot stress the importance of you tying up this loose end.”

“
Understood, sir.” Geoffrey closed his cell phone as his coat began whipping around in the wind created by the approaching helicopter.

“
That was fast…” Geoffrey muttered to himself. He was used to Kline anticipating his every need. Still didn’t make the timing any less weird.

He turned to one of the men standing next to him
,
who were gawking at the helicopter coming in for a landing. Handing him the tiny memory card from his PDA with the
S
heriff’s station video on it, he shouted over the din of the
helicopter’s approach
. “Take this to Kline
.
S
how
him the video on the card. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded. Geoffrey turned and
climbed
into the helicopter
,
twirling his fingers to let the pilot know to get going. The pilot nodded and yanked the collective up, causing the helicopter’s engines to strain as
the bird
began to rise rapidly off the desert floor. Geoffrey glanced at the activity
underway
at the bottom of the
m
esa
where all the drilling equipment had been set up.