started talking and thinking more about her and our dinner, I knew I’d start second-guessing myself and doubting Carolina. I needed to just let it sit and see what happened.
Carter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Thanks. That was good.”
I stared at his empty plate. “Did you even taste them?”
“A little bit,” he said, pushing back from the table and stretching out his legs. “So. Wanna tell me what we’re doing today?”
“You bring everything?”
He nodded. “A couple of rifles, scopes, and a bunch of ammo. We going on some sort of man picnic?”
“You wish,” I said, standing up from the table and grabbing both of our plates.
“You aren’t gonna break out a ring and propose to me, are you?” he asked, his eyebrows bouncing up and down.
I walked into the kitchen and dumped the plates in the sink. “I might propose you go screw yourself.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“No doubt,” I said. “We’re going out to Alpine.”
He made a face like I’d said we were going to go eat sewage instead of going to one of the outermost areas of San Diego County.
“Alpine?” he said, practically spitting the word out. “Why not just go to Kansas? Almost as far east.”
“I’m trying to expand your cultural horizons.”
“Gonna have to take me a lot fucking further than Alpine to do that.”
“Well, then, that’s not a trip I ever wish to make.”
He shook his head, then twisted around in his chair to look at me as I walked by him out to the kitchen. “Why are we wasting a perfectly good day going to Alpine, Noah?”
I stared past him out the glass door at the water. He was right. It was a perfectly good day. The light blue sky over the dark blue water made for a pretty picture.
I didn’t know if it was because of my renewed optimism over my relationship with Carolina, but I was feeling more of a sense of urgency to solve the whole Pluto thing. Linc was the one who could thread all of it together. I’d agreed to his aunt’s request to continue looking for him, but in truth, I was doing it more for me than for her. Mo and Lonnie had already made one visit to my home. I didn’t want another where someone other than me might have to face their wrath. And I refused to be glancing behind me, watching for them.
I reached for my gun on the counter. I checked the chamber and racked the slide, the noise echoing off the living room walls.
“We are going to Alpine,” I said, staring hard at the door, the brand-new glass door that had replaced the old one. “Because it’s time to go visit Lonnie and Mo.”
Thirty-two
Brochures handed out by the Chamber of Commerce would have you believe that all of San Diego looks out upon sparkling blue ocean or a harbor dotted with sailboats. A carefree place to visit where everyone has a view of the ocean.
While that is true for the fortunate few who live on the coastline, most of San Diego County is made up of communities set in canyons, hills, and brush that can’t get a sniff of the ocean even on the best day. Thirty miles to the east, Alpine is one of those places.
Interstate 8 snaked us through Mission Valley, north of San Diego State and then out to La Mesa and El Cajon. The highway then elevated up into the small mountain communities near Descanso and Julian, areas that were regularly singed with brush fires every summer, but managed to make comebacks as soon as the flames were extinguished.
The map that Professor Famazio had given me led us to an area just east of Alpine, on the western edge of Cleveland National Forest, before the interstate dropped again and made its way out to El Centro and the scorched desert of Arizona.
“We should let Arizona annex this part of San Diego,” Carter observed, shaking his head. “Tell ’em to send over a few fine-looking ladies from the U of A with a case of beer and it’s theirs.”
“Type that up and send it to the governor,” I said, pulling off the highway and heading north. “Never know what might happen.”
He nodded, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “I think I’ll do that.”
The two-lane asphalt road took us higher into the dense forest, the tall green pines hovering over the road and smothering the air with their aroma. We crested the highest point and started to descend through a series of S-curves. Famazio’s directions indicated a turnoff at the middle of the curves and I found it on our right, easing the Jeep into it, the tires crunching on the gravel.
“We gotta walk a little from here,” I said, opening my door.
“I better get to shoot someone,” Carter grumbled.
I walked around to the back of the Jeep. “No promises.”
He came around to meet me. “I wasn’t asking for permission.”
“You shoot anybody without my permission and it is a long walk back to Mission Beach.”
He stuck his tongue out at me.
We pulled his gear out of the back of the Jeep. The rifles were Ruger Mini-30s. Each had a scope attached to it. I noticed a selector switch on each receiver.
“I thought these were semiautomatics,” I said.
“They were,” he said, laying his on his shoulder. “Originally.”
“You had them converted to fully automatic? That legal?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Sorta. I don’t know.”
I shook my head.
We divvied up the magazines and walked down a dirt path that led from the turnout. It was steep and narrow and uncomfortable, our feet sliding forward on the loose rocks and uneven terrain every few steps. After ten minutes of walking and sliding, the path leveled off and then disappeared amid a cluster of pines.
“Now where?” Carter asked.
I looked at the map. “Should be right here.”
I moved forward to the trees and saw that about four trees in, the earth dropped away. I heard muffled voices down below.
“This is it,” I said, lowering my voice. I motioned to our right. “Let’s move up here, off the end of the trail.”
We went about ten yards off the trail and found a wider spot between two of the pines at the edge and lay down on our stomachs, putting the guns between us. We inched carefully toward the edge of the landing and looked down.
The area was a hundred feet below us, maybe twenty square yards of dirt and trodden grass. A concrete fire ring was the center of the circular patch. A boom box sat next to the ring, speed metal blaring from the speakers. At the farthest edge of the circle, the front ends of a couple of pickup trucks poked out from just behind the trees. A cache of assault rifles was spread out on the ground near the trucks. A thin trail disappeared into the trees next to the trucks, indicating another entry point.
About a dozen guys lounged in various acts of slackerdom-several in low-slung lawn chairs, a couple shaking their heads to the music, a few more standing, holding cans of beer. They all wore some variation of camouflage pants, white T-shirts, army jackets, and black leather boots.
All of them had one thing in common.
A shaved head.
“Cool,” Carter whispered. “A party.”
“And we didn’t get invites.”
“Probably ’cause we go to the wrong barber.”
We were too high up to make out any of the words in the muffled conversations below us. An occasional
