“Back to our voyeur. You figure he’s in another car. When are the blockades going up?” Mary knew that the Town Trust was waiting to see if the need for making an exclusion zone was necessary. Apparently, at this point, contingency plans had contingency plans.
“They’re watching carefully, now. Most of the family has been accounted for and tested.” Anthony nodded. “That even extends to the families of Brittany Kendall and Kat Jessop and every other person married into this vast network in the last few years. The goal is to see that no one is left out or forgotten. And Samantha told me one more person has relocated to Lusty for the time being. Cameron Drake has taken an apartment here. He arrived in town a couple of weeks ago and has completed his quarantine.”
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?” Mary asked.
“I met him through Jordan,” Anthony said. “I had a few group evenings with Jordan, Tracy, and Peter, as well as Cam and his late wife, Linda.” He frowned. “Because the uniform officer called to the scene of Linda’s accident knew that, he tagged me when it happened. It was a hell of a mess. I hope I never have to see good friends go through that kind of circumstance ever again.” He fell silent for just a moment, and his woman and his best friend let him. Mary laid her hand over his.
He wasn’t at all ashamed he’d cried at Linda Drake’s funeral or that thoughts of what had happened still brought a tear to his eye. And, yes, some of what he was feeling reached back to that day years ago when they’d lost his own father. His mother had been as in love with him as Cam had been with Linda. Sometimes, life hands us horrendous grief to deal with.
“How’s he doing?”
Anthony shrugged. He knew both Mary and Toby read the sadness in the gesture. “He’s broken,” he said. “It’ll take a while. But I’m glad he came here. I know he was having trouble living in the place he’d shared with his wife. It was a house they’d taken because of him being a builder…” Anthony let the sentence fall. Cam and Laura had worked with an architect and had finally settled on a plan. They’d gotten the blueprints about two weeks before the accident that had changed everything.
“If I know Aunt Samantha, she has him under her wing, even if he isn’t aware of it.” She reached for his hand and brought it to her lips.
That thought put a smile on Anthony’s face as well as one on his heart. Yes, Mary knew how he felt about Cam Drake and the hand that life had dealt the contractor. “I think so, too. And really, there’s no better place for him to be right now than right here, with the families.”
* * * *
He pulled his car to a stop on a small rise on the FM road. About a quarter of a mile ahead, the road he was on curved to the left, and he could see the road around the curve, and south, to the next rise. He stopped the car, because what he was looking at didn’t make any sense. He’d been on his way for a drive through Lusty, to make sure the Lincoln was still there. The tracker had stopped working a few weeks ago—whether it had been found or had been just a cheap piece of shit to begin with and had quit, he didn’t know.
Milo had sold it to him, and while he was good for his stuff, usually, he was currently too far away for him to throttle the little pecker for the shoddy device or get a refund.
So he’d staked out the main highway before dawn one day. Parking just west of the turn toward Lusty, he’d waited, and he’d struck gold. He'd followed the Lincoln with the two men in it, all the way into the city of Waco—and to the police headquarters building. He parked his own car, donned a hat and sunglasses, and taken a walk. He kept his head down because of the likely presence of surveillance. The Lincoln had not been left in the visitors’ lot, which answered every question he’d had. Both of those men had to be cops.
That wasn’t a problem. He knew cops and how they thought, how they operated. He’d known cops all his life.
Throughout that day, he’d driven past a few times, ensuring the car was still there, getting a sense of their routine. Then, around four in the afternoon, he’d been on hand to see the same two men get into the vehicle. He followed them until they’d turned off the state highway, heading back to Lusty.
He’d decided against placing another tracker on the car and to just casually drive past from time to time for now. He knew where they worked, and he knew where they lived. And he knew they were separated from the woman during the day. He didn’t need a tracker. He just needed to pay attention while he put together the best plan possible. So he’d decided that, once a day, at least, he’d take a drive to where they were. Cop shop through the week, Lusty on the weekends.
What he was looking at right now on this quiet road in the middle of nowhere might just throw a wrench into that plan.
What the fuck is going on?
He pulled his binoculars out of the glove box and took a look. Two men, under the direction of a third, appeared to be building…. what? A house? A shed? The two large block-like structures reminded him of elaborate gateposts, the kind some rich ranches sometimes had at the end of their long driveways. These two
