Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

die if they soaked it up, so their roots never go below the high-tide line. They tell us where it is.”

Natasha raised her eyes from the kayak to his face. “OK, enough teasing,” she said after a minute. “That’s your cue.”

He looked at her vaguely. “For what?”

“The Internet of Trees,” she said, and motioned toward the pines. “I want the grand tour. No interruptions.”

Tai drove the Civic onto Thorntip Landing, pulled to the edge of some scruffy brambles to his right, braked, and got out of the car.

He saw two vehicles parked to his left. One was a red flatbed pickup truck, the other the Pilot Sport. The kayak that had been atop it was gone. Safe to assume Mori and her boyfriend had taken it out on the water. For all he knew, they might be gone several hours. Possibly overnight or longer.

He wasn’t just going to wait around to find out.

He walked past the Sport and pickup, then looked over the dock with its piles of lobster traps and jumbled fishing gear. That prompted a thought, and he gazed out at the far end of the landing.

A tumbledown wooden shack stood on log pilings several yards offshore, elevated well above the waterline. He had seen similar stilt houses back home in New Zealand and guessed it was an old fisherman’s shed. When the tide was in, a small draft fishing boat would be almost level with its floor, making the step up from its deck to the entrance easy. But now, at low tide, the water lapping at the stilts was only ankle deep and ten or twelve feet below the entrance.

Tai raised his binoculars to his eyes. The shed was battered and broken-down. The side facing him—its western side—had a blotchy rash of pale green moss on its weathered planks. He saw no glass in any of its three sash windows. No door in the entrance. No stairs leading up to it.

He considered the pickup again and peered through the shed’s windows on a hunch. Sure enough, someone was inside. Moving about in there. Which begged the question of how that someone had gained entry.

Tai lowered his gaze to the space between the shed’s floor and the water. After a moment he got his answer. He could see the rungs of a ladder on the east side of the structure. Obviously, it led up to another entrance.

He tucked the binocs into his jacket and glanced back at the pickup truck, noting the empty ladder rack on the side of its flatbed.

Okey doke, he thought.

He took off his boots and socks, stuffed the socks inside the boots, and hid them in a clump of weeds. Then he rolled up his pants and waded offshore. Cold water splashed around his calves, making his molars click as he rounded the north end of the shed.

The ladder on its opposite side was aluminum with tubular handrails and rubber slip guards on its wide, step-like rungs. A ship’s ladder. Tai grabbed a handrail and shook it to make sure the ladder was steady, then climbed up to the entrance.

As his head came up above the platform floor, he glimpsed rubber boots and orange bib pants inside the shed.

The gray-haired guy wearing them was thick and bulky but not flabby. Probably in his midsixties but no pushover. The type who’d done physical work all his life. He stood with his back to Tai at a cluttered wooden worktable running the length of the west wall. On the adjacent wall was an old cast-iron hanging scale. There was a ball weight at one end and a hook on the other. The hook was about six inches long, with a thick shank, wide bend, and sharp point.

Tai climbed the final rungs of the ladder and boosted himself inside. Startled by the noise, the guy at the worktable spun around to look at him.

“Hello...and forgive me.” Tai lifted his hand over his head, palm forward, to signal he meant no harm. “Didn’t mean to come up on you so sudden.”

The guy gave no answer. He looked him warily up and down.

“My name’s Rick,” Tai said. “Rick Brooks. I’m meeting a couple of friends here. A woman—it’d be hard to miss her. And a fellow named Bryan. Wears his hair long like mine. Might have it up in a bun, the way they do these days.”

The man eyeballed him another minute. Then some of the suspicion trickled from his expression.

“That’d be Bryan Ferago,” he said.

“Right. And Natasha. We work together in New York.” Tai angled his head toward where he’d left the Civic. “I parked next to them...over by that path.”

He gray-haired guy nodded again. After a second, he offered his hand.

“I’m Dwight Stimson,” he said. “Known Bryan all his life. I saw him and your other friend here not an hour ago. Don’t think they mentioned anyone meeting them.”

Tai’s shoulders rose and fell. “We were supposed to go out to Chacagua Island together. But I hit some weather driving up here and phoned for them to go on ahead.”

“They left with the ebb tide,” Stimson said. “It makes paddling easier.” He nodded toward Tai’s bare, dripping feet. “Guess you already noticed it’s coming back in.”

Tai gave a miserable smile. “It was no fun sloshing out in that cold water. But I saw you in here and was hoping you’d seen them. With all the rain and wind down the interstate, I half expected they’d scratch the whole plan.”

“Agreed, but they didn’t,” Stimson said. “I gave them my phone number once they told me about it. If the storm blows up this far, I’ll pick them up with my boat.”

Tai looked past Stimson at the worktable. It was covered with large squares of coated wire mesh, metal rings, spools of line, netting, a cordless pneumatic hand tool, pliers, scissors, and various other things he didn’t recognize.

He smiled. “So you’re a real Maine lobsterman?”

“Now, what makes you think that?” Stimson looked down at his bib pants and