And then there was Mathis. He was more of a surprise to Gus than Savage. Because Morton Mathis didn’t seem to be physically exhausted. Gus was becoming an expert on analyzing people’s walks from behind, and he could see the way Mathis’ feet pushed hard off the stony ground with every step.
That wasn’t what struck Gus as odd. Even though Mathis was a transplant from a large city, with no apparent wilderness experience, there was no reason to believe he didn’t spend huge amounts of time working out, despite a physical appearance that seemed to give the lie to that idea. But what did seem inexplicably strange was the way he was pretending to be as weary as the others. His shoulders slumped under his pack, his head hung down almost to his chest. He was in every way the picture of exhaustion. A picture contradicted by the reality of his legs.
Of course it was possible that Mathis was faking fatigue simply to get away from Shawn, who had spent the last few hours hiking alongside one lawyer after another, and who was now glued to Mathis’ side.
That had been the key to Shawn’s plan for the day. While Gus kept an eye on the entire pack from the end of the line, Shawn would use the time to get to know the lawyers better. Not that either of the detectives had any desire to forge the strong ties of friendship that Rushton had prescribed for the entire group. All Shawn and Gus really needed was a little confirmation of what they already knew: that Mathis was behind not only the murders of Ellen Svaco and mime Archie Kane, but also the espionage plot Archie had been trying to stop.
At the beginning of the hike, Gus had managed to tell Shawn everything he’d learned from the employee files, and Shawn agreed that this was all but proof that Mathis was their guy. By the time they reached their first night’s stopping point, they were certain that Shawn would have been able to get the last bits they’d need to put their murderer away for good.
But Mathis turned out to be a harder nut to crack than they’d expected. Shawn had tried to start a dozen conversations with the man, but they had never risen above the smallest of small talk, and each time, Shawn had had to move on to another lawyer without having learned anything.
Shawn slowed his pace enough to let Mathis move ahead, and then he stopped to let Gus catch up with him.
“Anything?” Gus said.
“He’s smart,” Shawn said. “He may be onto us.”
“What makes you say that?” Gus said, a feeling of dread managing to bubble up through the cracks in his exhaustion. He forced it back down quickly. He couldn’t afford to let fear get a foothold. There wouldn’t be a snack bar selling ice-cream sandwiches to bring him out of it here.
“I’ve tossed out enough bait to land a hundred sharks, but he hasn’t even nibbled,” Shawn said. “I’ve tried to engage him on the subject of Archie Kane, but all he says is that it’s a great loss to the firm and ‘to us all personally.’ I tried to get him to talk about the tech stuff he handles, but he insisted that so much of it was confidential that he makes a practice of never discussing any of it so as not to make a mistake. I even mentioned the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-which isn’t easy to casually drop into conversation. He acted like he’d never given the place a thought.”
A terrible idea hit Gus. Again, he fought to keep it from turning into panic. “What if he’s not the right guy?”
“We’ve decided he is,” Shawn said. “We put a lot of thought into that conclusion, and it seems premature to throw away all that work simply because we’re having a hard time making a brilliant career criminal expose himself on the course of a nature walk.”
“If by ‘a lot of thought’ you mean you made a snap decision based on a couple of physical and behavioral characteristics, it’s hard to argue,” Gus said.
“And you confirmed it through research.”
“I found information that reinforced my existing prejudice,” Gus said. “On its own, the fact that he specializes in technology doesn’t mean much of anything.”
They walked a few paces in silence as Shawn thought this over. “If you’re right,” he finally said, “we’ve picked the wrong suspect. And while we’ve been focused on Mathis, the real killer has been focused on us-and is planning to take us out.”
Gus felt a cold jolt of adrenaline surge through his system. At first he assumed it was from the awareness of the danger they were in. But then he realized his body was responding to a sound his conscious mind hadn’t noticed.
“What was that?” Shawn said as the sound came again.
It took Gus a second to recognize the noise that came drifting around the curve in the trail. At first he tried to figure out what kind of animal or bird made a sound like that.
Then it hit him. It wasn’t an animal. It was a woman.
And she was screaming.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Before his pack hit the dirt, Gus had launched himself down the trail and towards the source of the scream. Freed from the weight he’d been carrying for hours, Gus practically flew. He could feel himself hurtling into the air with every step. He realized this was incredibly dangerous-if he landed on one of the rocks that littered the trail, he’d break an ankle, and there was no chance the lawyers would carry him down the mountain. But he recognized the voice that was screaming, and he had to help.
If it had been Gwendolyn, perhaps Gus wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. But Jade exuded an ethereal vulnerability, and he couldn’t stop imagining her lying dead in Peter Pan’s hands as he begged the audience to clap if they believed in fairies.
Shawn was right next to Gus as they hurtled around the bend in the trail. When they got around it, they both stopped dead, shocked at what lay before them.
For the last few miles, the trail had hugged the side of the mountain on their left, and dropped off sharply to the right. But now the left side opened up into a wide meadow. A clear stream ran through it, and wildflowers bloomed yellow and red for as far as they could see.
The sight that stopped Shawn and Gus was what had been erected in the center of the meadow. Four tents, each striped in a different color, stood facing one another across a quad. Between them, a long table was set with a service fit for the White House-linen tablecloth, bone china, fine crystal, and sterling silver. A professional range had been set up a short distance away from the tents, and two young men in black slacks and white shirts stood by, while a woman in her mid-twenties, dressed the same way, unboxed a dozen bottles of wine.
Jade was standing, stunned, at the edge of the encampment. She let out another scream of joy. The other lawyers, who had taken their places around the table, ignored her.
“How did they get all this up there?” Gus knew there were other questions that were probably more pressing, but the surreal sight pushed them all out of his head.
“It’s really amazing how much you can fit in one of those helicopters when they’re not crammed full of egos,” Shawn said. “Hungry?”
Gus hadn’t thought he was. But now the air was filled with the delicate scents of sorrel soup and roast lamb, and suddenly he was starving. He started to move towards the table when a thought hit him.
“Our packs,” he said. “We’ve got to go back for them.”
“We’ll go back later,” Shawn said. “The food will be all gone.”
“It’ll be dark later. And in the morning we can’t take a chance that we’ll have to go back when the others are pressing on ahead.”
“So we’ll leave them,” Shawn said. “If they’re serving us meals like this along the way, why should we schlep all that dried stuff?”
“Maybe that’s exactly what Rushton wants us to think,” Gus said. “This is all a trick to get us to leave our packs behind, and then there’s no food for the next four days.”
“If he wanted us to starve, why would he put food in our packs in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” Gus said. “I don’t really understand anything about this trip. But I know I’ll feel better if I have my pack with me.”
