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

“You see anything?” Tai asked, and glanced down at him.

Kai saw a lot of things. Scuff marks in the dirt. Snapped brushwood. Faint heel impressions. He had followed the signs all the way from the kayak.

He noted and uploaded the details to his onboard.

“They came this far,” he said in a hushed voice. “Then they turned off the path.”

“Which way?”

Kai thought. Looked up. Turned his head to the left. He could see several other partial shoe impressions. All ran away from them. Toward the north side of the island.

“That way,” he said, gesturing. “To where we moored the lobster boat.”

Tai grunted with interest. He could tell there was more. It was his brother’s tone. “What’s the problem?” he said.

“There are irregularities,” Kai said.

“What sort of irregularities?”

Kai pointed to the ground. “You see this heel print?”

“Yeah.”

“The impression’s shallow. But fairly distinct.” He traced it with his fingertip. “The curve at the back of the heel...it shows that the foot was turned away from us.”

Tai produced another interested grunt. “It ought to be. If they were going toward our boat.”

“Right,” Kai said. “But look.”

He touched his fingertip to a small gray stone roughly the shape of a peanut, about eight inches above the heel print. One side was darker than the rest, and there was a bit of loose earth around it.

“This was displaced by someone walking,” he said, and pointed to its dark side. “The part right here—see?—it was in the ground. But you hardly see an impression where it was. And there isn’t much loose dirt. That tells us it wasn’t too deep. Maybe a fraction of an inch.”

Tai rubbed his chin. “The heel print’s straight below it. You could set a ruler between them.”

“Right,” Kai said.

“So the front of the foot should’ve stepped right on top of it. On the down stride. Either left the stone where it was or pressed it deeper into the ground.”

“Which isn’t what happened,” Kai said. “It was knocked free of the ground. And the dark side’s facing out. Away from the edge of the foot. So is the loose dirt. See? Out.”

“Instead of in,” Tai said. “Where the foot and stone would’ve made contact. If it was heading toward the boat.”

Kai nodded. “There’s your first irregularity, brother.”

Tai was silent a second. Then nodded to himself. “You’re telling me the stone was knocked loose by someone leaving the boat. Coming in this direction.”

“Right.”

“Toward us.”

“Right,” Kai said. “What we can’t know is whether it was the same person. I can’t tell from the tracks if there were one or two of them. But we have to figure two.”

“Mori and her friend.”

“Right,” Kai said. “One could’ve left the heel going toward the boat. And then kicked the stone out of the ground walking back.”

“What’s the difference to us if they’re together?”

“None,” Kai said. “Big difference if they separated. If, say, one stayed at the boat and one came back this way. Or something of the sort. The problem, like I said, is I don’t see any shoe impressions coming in this direction. I don’t see any shoe impressions leading anywhere but to the boat. It’s like whoever kicked the fucking stone changed his—or her—pattern of walking on the way back here.”

Comprehension dawned on Tai’s face.

“And that’s your second irregularity,” he said.

Kai stood up and faced him. “Bingo,” he said.

Tai thought about that a minute. Then he looked at his brother.

“She’s on to us,” he said.

Natasha peered over the edge of the pit at the two men on the trail. Bryan was inches to her right, and both were clinging precariously to the pit’s bare earth wall. The moment they’d heard the men coming, they had scrambled partway down into the hole, using the rotted timbers that formed its cross braces as hand-and footholds.

“Tasha,” Bryan whispered. “Who do you think they are?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she stayed still and quiet, watching them through the brush, her eyes barely above the pit opening. It was crazy, she thought. Like seeing double. Two identical versions of Tattoo Guy were standing there. They were about fifteen feet below Rhea on the path—

She caught herself. No, that wasn’t right. Be precise, katya. In all things.

Only one of them was standing on the path. The other was crouched just off it, right where she and Bryan had turned off to investigate the sound of the approaching boat. And the cap on his head...

He was wearing a black Dev Zero ball cap, its logo bold and white on the crown.

Natasha had never mentioned Tattoo Guy to Bryan. She hadn’t seen any reason to bring him up and couldn’t explain everything right now. But here he was in duplicate. Crazy, yeah. And beyond frightening. Seeing the cap on his head horrified her. Absolutely horrified. It had brought the burnt-plastic taste back into her mouth and turned the forest glow dark indigo.

She knew she was in trouble. Terrible trouble. And because of her, because she hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself sooner, because of her hard-core fucking denial, Bryan was too.

She took a calming breath. Another. She couldn’t just fixate on the cap. It wouldn’t do any good. She had to see whatever else she could see.

OK. What, then? Be precise.

Both men were carrying backpacks and gear bags. But the one standing on the trail had what appeared to be a rifle sling on his back. And one of his bags had three stubby antennas sticking straight up out of it.

Natasha was thinking it had to be a jammer.

She clung to the upper cross brace. Quiet, still. A dozen or so feet below her, the bottom of the hole was covered with pottery shards, hand-tooled boat nails and fish hooks, colored-glass tincture bottles, scraps of rotted leather, and animal bones. The splintered, decayed timber shoring up its bare earth sides crawled with insects and slugs and thousands of tiny, milling mites. The fungus blearing the cross braces resembled tufts of dirty cotton. The bones were small and scattered and had been