8
Jack wasn't sure how to play this.
Here he was, following the Blagden truck down this bumpy country road in the dark. The very dark. The moon hadn't risen, not a street lamp in sight, and he and the truck were the only vehicles on the road.
They'd turned off the Turnpike miles ago, then wound into these low hills. No way they couldn't know someone was coasting along behind them. But did they care?
That was the question. If they knew they'd been hauling a murdered woman's body across state lines, they'd be more than a little paranoid and watching their rearview mirrors. They might even pull over to let a following car pass.
But if they believed they were hauling a weird chunk of concrete and nothing more, they wouldn't care who was behind them.
Although the truck had made no evasive maneuvers, Jack decided to play it safe and proceed on the assumption that the drivers knew the score.
So when he saw the truck slow and make a cautious turn onto an even narrower road, Jack drove on by. He spotted two sets of headlights sitting atop a rise. Through his rearview he watched the truck climb to the top of the rise and stop by the headlights.
Jack killed his own lights and pulled over. He stepped out of the car and found himself facing what looked like an open field, overgrown and bordered by a rickety wire fence. He checked the sky. Broken cloud cover blocked most of the starshine. He looked around for signs that the moon might be rising but found no telltale glow. Good. The less light the better.
He hopped over the wire and made his way in a crouch through the tall grass toward the lights.
He dropped lower as he neared the top of the rise, then stopped and squatted just out of reach of the headlights.
The flatbed and two pickups sat angled around a pit that looked maybe seven or eight feet wide. From the size of the mound of excavated dirt piled to the side, Jack guessed it was a pretty deep hole.
Deep enough to swallow Jamie's concrete sarcophagus.
Four men with shovels, plus one of the drivers, stood around the rim showing not a hint of furtiveness. That persuaded Jack that they probably wouldn't be able to add anything to what he already knew. He'd made the trip for nothing.
No… not for nothing. He'd learned where they were burying Jamie Grant.
The driver on the ground made a signal to his partner in the flatbed's cab. As Jack watched, the truck's winch began to raise the forward end of the pillar, tilting the butt over the black maw of the hole.
Jack's instincts spurred him to put a stop to this now. Jamie deserved better. But he'd be taking on six men; some of them could be armed. Better to let them complete their work. This way at least he'd know where to find Jamie when the time came to arrange for a proper burial.
And another reason for holding back: As long as he knew where to find the pillar—literally where the body was buried—it remained a potential weapon against Brady and Jensen. What he had to do now was figure out how to use it to inflict maximum damage.
So he held his place and his breath and watched the pillar angle up, up, up, then slip off the truck bed and into the hole.