John Sandford - Secret Prey

He’d taken three bucks from this stand. The county road foreman, who’d been cleaning ditches in preparation for the snow months, told him that a twelve-pointer had moved into the neighborhood during the summer. The foreman had seen him cutting down this way, across the middle of the swamp toward this very tree. Not more than two weeks ago.

The chairman clambered into the stand fifteen feet up the tree, and settled into the bench with his back to the oak. The stand looked like a suburban deck, built of preservative-treated two-by-sixes, with a two-by-four railing that served as a gun rest. The chairman slipped off his pack, hung it from a spike to his right, and pulled the rifle up with the parachute cord.

The cartridges were still warm from his pocket as he loaded the rifle. That wouldn’t last long. Temperatures were in the teens, with an icy wind cutting at exposed skin. Later in the day, it would warm up, maybe into the upper thirties, but sitting up here, early, exposed, it would get real damn cold. Freeze the ass off that fuckin’ O’Dell. O’Dell always made out that she was impervious to cold; but this day would get to her.

The chairman, wrapped in nylon and Thinsulate, was still a little too warm from the hike in, and he half dozed as he sat in the tree, waiting for first light. He woke once more to the sound of a deer walking through the dried oak leaves, apparently following a game trail down to the swamp. The animal settled on the hillside behind him.

Now that was interesting.

Forty or fifty yards away, no more. Still up the ridge, but it should be visible after sunrise, if it moved again. If it didn’t, he’d kick it out on the way back to the cabin.

He sat waiting, listening to the wind. Most of the oaks still carried their leaves, dead brown, but hanging on. When he closed his eyes, their movement sounded like a crackling of a small, intimate wood fire.

The chairman sighed: so much to do.

The killer was dressed in blaze orange and was moving quietly and quickly along the track. Dawn was not far away and the window of opportunity could be measured in minutes:

Here: now twenty-four steps down the track. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight… twenty-three, twentyfour. A tree here to the left… Wish I could use a light .

The oak tree was there, its bark rough against the fingertips. And just to the right, a little hollow in the ground behind a fallen aspen.

Just get down here… quietly, quietly! Did he hear me? These leaves… didn’t think about the leaves yesterday, now it sounds like I’m walking on cornflakes… Where’s that log, must be right here, must be… ah!

From the nest in the ground, the fallen aspen was at exactly the right height for a rifle rest. A quick glance through the scope: nothing but a dark disc.

What time? My God, my watch has stopped. No. Six seventeen. Okay. There’s time. Settle down. And listen! If anybody comes, may have to shoot… Now what time? Six-eighteen. Only two minutes gone? Can’t remember… two minutes, I think .

There’d be only one run at this. There were other people nearby, and they were armed. If someone else came stumbling along the track, and saw the orange coat crouched in the hole…

If they came while it was dark, maybe I could run, hide. But maybe, if they thought I was a deer, they’d shoot at me. What then? No. If someone comes, I take the shot then, whoever it is. Two shots are okay. I can take two. It wouldn’t look like an accident anymore, but at least there wouldn’t be a witness.

What’s that? Who’s there? Somebody?

The killer sat in the hole and strained to hear: but the only sounds were the dry leaves that still hung from the trees, shaking in the wind; the scraping of branches; and the cool wind itself. Check the watch.

Getting close, now. Nobody moving, I’m okay. Cold down here, though. Colder than I thought. Have to be ready… The old man… have to think about the old man. If he’s there, at the cabin, I’ll have to take him. And if his wife’s there, have to take her… That’s okay: they’re old… Still nothing in the scope. Where’s the sun?

Daniel S. Kresge was the Chairman of the board, president, and chief executive officer of the Polaris Bank System. He’d gathered the titles to him like an archaic old Soviet dictator. And he ran his regime like a dictator: two hundred and fifty banks spread across six midwestern states, all wrapped in his cost-cutting fist.

If everything went exactly right, he would hold his job for another fifteen months, when Polaris would be folded into Midland Holding, owner of six hundred banks in the south central states. There would be some casualties.

The combined banks’ central administration would be in Fort Worth. Not many Polaris executives would make the move. In fact, the whole central administrative section would eventually disappear, along with much of top management. one would probably land on his feet: his investments division was one of the main profit centers at Polaris, and he’d attracted some attention. O’Dell ran the retail end of Polaris. Midland would need somebody who knew the territory, at least for a while, so she could wind up as the number two or three person in Midland’s retail division. She wouldn’t like that. Would she take it? Kresge was not sure.

Robles would hang on for a while: a pure technician, he ran data services for Polaris, and Midland would need him to help integrate the separate Polaris and Midland data systems.

McDonald was dead meat. Mortgage divisions didn’t make much anymore, and Midland already had a mortgage division-which they were trying to dump, as it happened.

Kresge turned the thought of the casualties in his head: when they actually started working on the details of the merger, he’d have to sweeten things for the Polaris execs who’d be putting the parts together, and the people Midland would need: Robles, for sure. Probably O’Dell and Bone.

McDonald? Fuck him.

Kresge would lose his job along with the rest. Unlike the others, he’d walk with something in the range of an after-tax forty million dollars. And he’d be free.

In two weeks, Kresge would sit in a courtroom and solemnly swear that his marriage was irretrievably broken. His wife had agreed not to seek alimony. In return for that concession, she’d demanded-and he’d agreed to give her- better than seventy-five percent of their joint assets. Eight million dollars. Letting go of the eight million had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. But it was worth it: there’d be no strings on him.

When she’d signed the deal, neither his wife nor her wolverine attorney had understood what the then-brewing merger might mean. No idea that there’d be a golden parachute for the chairman. And his ex wouldn’t get a nickel of the new money. He smiled as he thought about it. She’d ired the wolverine specifically to fuck him on the settlement, and thought she had. Wait’ll the word got into the newspapers about his settlement. And it would get in the newspapers.

Fuck her.

Forty million. He knew what he’d do with it. He’d leave the Twin Cities behind, first thing. He was tired of the cold. Move out to L.A. Buy some suits. Maybe one of those BMW two-seaters, the 850. He’d been a good, gray Minnesota banker all of his life. Now he’d take his money to L.A. and live a little. He closed his eyes and thought about what you could do with forty million dollars in the city of angels. Hell, the women alone…

Kresge opened his eyes again with a sudden awareness of the increasing cold: shivered and carefully shook the stiffness out. Looking to the east, back toward the cabin, he could see an unmistakable streak of lighter sky. There was a ruffling of leaves to his right, a steady trampling sound. Another deer went by, a shadow in the semi-dark as the animal picked its way through a border of finger-thick alders at the fringe of the swamp. No antlers that he could see. He watched until the deer disappeared into the tamarack.