The Hunt Club

"How many we talking about?"

"Hold on." Hunt put a steadying hand on one leg of the tripod and leaned down into the binoculars. He had his night visions in the trunk of the Cooper, but it wasn't really quite twilight yet, and he hadn't changed over to them. "Some guy in a dark suit with the kid and a woman. I don't know if it's Carol. Can you get her, Craig? Over."

"No. We're blocked by the house."

Hunt followed the little procession as they made their way over to one of the SUVs. "Do we know how many people were in the house? The Manions, the kid, the security guy. Anybody else?"

"The kid's got a na

"So five. Five."

"Sounds right," Mickey said.

The man in the suit got into the car while the boy and the woman got into the backseat from the far door, now outside of Hunt's vision. In the evening stillness, even from across the distance, Hunt picked up the faint echoes of the car's ignition kicking in. It rolled forward, pulled up, and stopped right at the front door, blocking most of it. Hunt saw the house's door open and close. He had a sense of movement, but that was all it was. "Mick," he said, "they're coming down. I don't know if everybody got in the car, but you'd better follow and find out."

"Roger. On it." Three minutes later, Mick checked in again. "Tinted windows, Wyatt. I can't see in."

Hunt resisted the urge to swear. "All right. Which way are they headed?"

"North."

"So not back to the city?"

"Probably not. Maybe food in the valley."

"Let's hope. Okay, stay with 'em. Call when you know who's with them."

"Check."

Twenty minutes later, Chiurco's voice, albeit quietly, rasped through the speaker. "Wyatt, you got me? The back door just opened."

"You on night vision?"

"Yeah."

The sky directly overhead was still blue, but by now the shadows from the Coast Range had engulfed the entire landscape up to the peaks behind Hunt's lookout. True dusk wasn't ten minutes away. Hunt had changed over to his Night Scout binoculars, but they were useless since he had no view of the back of the house.

Hunt didn't need any visual equipment, though, to see the blade of light that swept across the ridge behind the château, then swung back higher in among the oaks and boulders, where Tamara and Craig had been hiding all afternoon. Hunt saw no trace of them in the light's beam, a good sign that nobody else could see them, either.

He hoped. "Lay low," he whispered.

The beam of light disappeared altogether, only to return in about twenty seconds from the same spot and following the same trajectory. Chiurco's voice, barely audible now: "Trying to flush us."

"Got you. Hang back. Can you tell who it was?"

"An older woman, I'd say. It must be Carol, huh? Now she's back inside."

Glued to his binoculars now, Hunt realized that he'd made a tactical error. With Mickey now gone with his walkie-talkie, he could not leave his own vantage point at the base camp and keep the front door under surveillance at the same time. There would have to be a gap. When they started driving down to the house, they would not know whether Carol was driving or walking to some location on her property. Everything depended on their ability to follow wherever she might lead them, and while she was out of their sight, they might lose her. He pointed this out to Juhle.

"So what do we do? You want me to go down first?"

"Same problem. No communication," Hunt said. But then suddenly the point became moot. "Damn. Here she is." He spoke into his walkie-talkie. "She's out the front door, Craig. Can you get her in vision?"

"Not fast. We're starting down. Coming around your right side."

"Got it. Be quick if you can. But she's got her flashlight, and looks like something in the other hand. Maybe a gun, Craig. Watch out."

"We're watching."

Next to Hunt, Juhle whispered. "Where's she going? If she gets near her car, we've got to haul ass!"

"We've got to wait, Dev. We've got to wait. If she doesn't get in a car, we've got her."

They could see the flashlight crossing behind the fountain. "Come on, Carol," Hunt said. "Don't get in the car. Don't get in the car!"

"We've got to get down there." Juhle, caught up in the urgency, opened the passenger door to the Cooper. "We've got to move, Wyatt. Now! We're going to lose her!"

As the flashlight's beam now crossed in front of the other SUV down in the château's parking area, Hunt realized that she wasn't going to be driving anywhere. He grabbed his tripod, threw it into his backseat, and picked up his one pair of Vipers, his night-vision goggles. Ru

36

From the time Hunt hit the gas on the downhill, it took the Cooper seventy-eight seconds to get to the driveway turnoff up to Manion Cellars. After the right turn, Hunt doused his headlights, took his Vipers from Juhle, and pulled them down over his eyes into place. Getting his bearings with the night-vision lenses, he drove slowly and hoped quietly up toward the gate that crossed the driveway.

He whispered into his walkie-talkie. "Craig? You got her?"

"No. But there's an old barn down to my right, where there might have been a light when I first got here. But it's gone now."

"Where are you?"

"Pretty far up, still. I didn't want her to hear our chatter. I'm by the road that runs around the back of the hill, where the caves are."

Juhle said to make sure whether he was above or below the barn, and Craig said he was still above.

Hunt turned in his seat. "Where's this barn?" he asked Juhle. "You know it?"

"Yeah. If you go up in front of the new caves, it's in a little hollow on the right. Lots of junk laying on the ground all around it."

Back into his walkie-talkie. "Craig. Where's Tam?"

"Up above with the binoculars. How about you?"

"Me and Dev are just at the gate."

"You guys ought to split up."

"That's the call. I'm going to send Dev around up the trail you're on." Hunt had seen this clearly enough from the base camp. The unpaved road wound around behind the base of the promontory and continued up until it disappeared behind the château. "You start coming down slow. He'll be coming up. Meet up in back of the barn and wait there. If she comes out, don't let her see you, and don't stop her. Let her do whatever she's doing."

"What about you?"

"I'm going past the caves in the front."

"So she's in the barn?"

"I guess that's the working theory. Now we've got to shut down the chatter."

"Okay," Craig whispered. "I'm out."

Hunt clicked off his walkie-talkie and dropped it on the floor beneath his feet. Shading the light with his hand, he flicked on and off his small, industrial-strength flashlight, and put it in his jacket pocket. Both men in the car reached for their door handles, but Hunt grabbed Juhle by the sleeve, stopping him. "Dead quiet, Dev. Easy open, no close. Let it happen. And if this goes south, take off immediately. You were never here."

Hunt crossed around his car and, crouching, followed Juhle for the first fifty feet or so, until he came to the trail on his left that led up to the new caves from the tasting room below. As soon as he left the pavement of the road, he became aware of the gravel crunching under his feet, each footfall magnified in the stillness of the night.