Undercover Hunter Read Free Page B

past summer. Some new people from that. Some who came with the semiconductor plant and didn’t leave when it died. But most folks were born here and will be buried here. That kind of place.”
    “I’ve been in villages like that.” She’d run into them in the Appalachians on a couple of cases involving military personnel, and overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tight, cliquish and distrusting of outsiders. How was that going to help them?
    She looked out the side window again, feeling as if the day’s gloom was settling into her bones. Some nuts were impossible to crack, and this sounded like one. How the hell were a couple of pretend travel writers going to get any real information from anyone? It would give them the freedom to move around without suspicion, but little else.
    The more she thought about it, the less she liked this whole cover story. Profiling, in which they’d both been trained, could only get you so far. After that, you needed solid information.
    “You know,” she said presently, “this cover story stinks. The whole town is going to be upset because kids are disappearing. Does anyone think they’re going to want to talk about that with travel writers?”
    He didn’t answer for a minute. The car noises seemed to grow louder until he spoke. “That crossed my mind. But you tell me, Dawkins, how else we can insert a couple of strangers into a small community like this? No matter how we do it, we’re going to stand out and nobody’s going to want to talk. This cover story at least elevates us above a couple of dubious drifters and doesn’t give away our real mission.”
    He was right. “So we back up the local law. I can deal.”
    “Yeah. They’ll probably give us most of the information. We’re the ones who need to help pull it together. And who knows? We’re talking about one thing and looking for another. We might learn something useful just by keeping our eyes and ears open.”
    “You mean the unsub could slip up.”
    “We can hope.”
    Amazing how much of law enforcement came down to someone slipping up and someone else having the wit to notice the slip. She drummed her fingers on her thigh. They had been called up because of their training in profiling. She didn’t have the highest regard for it, but it could occasionally provide some useful directions to an investigation.
    She spoke as they passed the sign announcing that they were entering Conard County. “We’d better get on a first-name basis fast.”
    “Yeah. Why’d you tell that barkeep that you were going to tout his burgers? He’ll be looking for an article.”
    “Nah. He has a business card and a story to tell. That’ll make him happy. He’ll brag and our cover will be established.”
    “True.”
    She guessed that was an olive branch from him.
    * * *
    Calvin Sweet finished arranging his latest trophy and stood back in the barn loft to admire it. Three of them now hung from the commercial fish netting he’d acquired on his travels.
    He liked that netting. It was better than the cargo net he’d used before, thinner, made of highly durable plastic. As close as he was going to get to a spiderweb unless he took the time to weave one himself.
    His three trophies, wrapped in clear plastic painter’s drop cloth, hung beautifully like ornaments, visible but slightly hidden in their protective cases. Mysterious, like the life force he had taken from them. Holy now that they’d been saved.
    Backing up, he settled on a bale of hay to admire his handiwork. His private collection, growing steadily, a work of art. He hoped that someday someone other than himself would be able to admire it. It had taken a lot of work and thought. Hunting for something more to his liking than rope cargo net had actually taken quite a while. There were a surprising number of different kinds of fishnets and netting, and he’d had to do research until he could walk into that place on the East Coast and order exactly what he wanted.
    Even the clear