Angie got to ride in the center of the front seat while Rand drove. Mac kept his gun trained on the two men in the back.
“So exactly what were you told you were doing this weekend?” Mac asked. Rand glanced at him, and kept driving.
The men didn’t say anything. “No really,” Mac persisted. “Did you know that Norton was going to take you up here to play war games? Do you follow Sensei on Facebook? What were you told?”
“As if you would know anything about Sensei,” Reserve 2 muttered. He was a sullen man by nature Mac thought and being captured by the men they were supposed to be hunting hadn’t improved his mood. Probably early 30s, a small man, with a chip on his shoulder.
“Inner circle,” Mac said with a shrug. “I get his inner circle newsletter daily. And I’m pretty sure you all aren’t following instructions. Because he hasn’t mentioned a need for killing his own men.”
The two men looked at each other worriedly. Reserve 1 was a bit a younger, maybe mid-20s, spent a little more time in the gym. He had military short brown hair, although Mac doubted he’d ever served.
“So, what did Norton tell you?”
“He said one of the men on this trip was a wanted man, and he — you — had infiltrated the trip,” Reserve 2 said.
“Wanted for what?” Mac asked.
“Killing a man,” Reserve 2 answered. “That dead hiker in the morgue. And we needed to stop you before you killed again.”
“Obviously, we were too late,” Reserve 1 said with a gesture toward the body in the cargo hold.
Mac turned that story over in his head. It didn’t hold up, of course, but Norton needed plausible, not truth. “And is this how you normally bring in a suspect in a murder case?” he asked. “How many reserves are out here? And why were you shooting at members of the trek yesterday?”
“Us?” Reserve 1 said startled. “We weren’t shooting at anyone!”
“Who was? Ken carted four injured out early this morning,” Mac said. “And there’s another dead body besides this one. Cleve? You all know him?”
“Went to school with him,” Reserve 1 said. Mac judged it was news to him.
“A man sat in a tree and held a group of the trek clients pinned down yesterday after killing Cleve. I was the one that chased him off. And Mark can testify to that. So, unless you can figure out a way that I was firing into the ravine and out of the ravine at the same time? Your crew killed him.”
Mac watched the two, studying them. He didn’t think they knew what Norton and Sensei were up to. They glanced at each other. Reserve 2 chewed his lip.
“You really an FBI agent, Rand?” Reserve 2 asked.
“Yes,” Rand replied. “And I really am up here to find out who is killing hikers and homeless men — it’s been going on for a couple of years, matter of fact. Norton tell you all that?”
“No,” Reserve 2 said slowly. “Just heard about this last one.”
“So, here’s the truth of if it, guys,” Rand said. “You’re in trouble. Your boss has gone rogue, and he thinks he’s playing wargames with Ken and his tour group. Then this morning, Sheriff Norton offered Ken a chance to leave with his tour group and the wounded if he’d leave these two reporters behind for Norton to hunt down and kill. And if you don’t want to be serving a prison sentence along with him, you need to tell me what you know. Starting with the call out for the weekend.”
Reserve 1 closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. “Shit,” he said. “He started believing all the crap, didn’t he?”
“What crap?” Mac asked.
Reserve 1, whose name turned out to Tim, started talking. And Kevin, Reserve 2, interjected occasionally to create a picture that Mac found disturbing, in part, because he had hoped that with Ken and his crew gone, things would become simpler. If they were still up here they were the enemy. But now? Now, they didn’t know how many of the reserves were a part of Norton’s war games, and how many thought they were on a man hunt for a suspect who had killed a hiker and might kill again.
Mac looked at the dead body they were carrying, and amended that thought: had killed again already.
The callout came Friday afternoon, but they’d been given a heads up earlier in the week that there might be a training exercise in the mountains this weekend. Kevin had thought it was a bit early in the spring to be hiking up here, and he glanced anxiously at the sky visible through the front windshield, but Norton had laughed at him and said they needed some wilderness skills for blustery days not just the sunny and warm ones. Hard to argue with that, Kevin had thought, so he’d volunteered to go. They’d had a meet up at the Sheriff’s Department Friday evening, organized car pools and headed out.
“Any regular deputies along?” Mac asked.
Kevin frowned and thought about it. “Don’t think so,” he said finally. “Which is odd, there usually are.”
“So, you headed out,” Mac prompted.
Kevin nodded and resumed his narrative. They’d driven directly to the site where they set up camp — it was obviously a site that had seen some use. Kevin assumed that Wilderness Adventures or one of the other tour guides had built it. They set up camp, talked for a while, and went to sleep. Next morning, they had breakfast, got in a run, came back for a briefing.
Norton told them that they had a killer attached to a Wilderness Adventure group. He’d come up before, killed a hiker, and then rejoined the group to get out of the mountains.
“This time, Norton said we were going to catch him in the act,” Tim interjected. “He
