Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

“Think of this as an adventure,” Diesel said.

“I’m from Jersey. I get my adventure on the Turnpike. I only fly if there’s a beach or a casino involved. And then it’s in a big plane serving alcohol.”

We parked and crossed the blacktop to the pi lot. He was average height, average weight, and covered head to toe with tattoos. His graying blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

“This is Boon,” Diesel said. “I’ve known Boon for about a hundred years.”

I nodded a numb ac know ledg ment and stood in a catatonic stupor.

“She thinks he li cop ters aren’t safe,” Diesel said to Boon.

“Hah. If everything we did was safe, we’d never do anything, would we?” Boon said.

I inadvertently whimpered, and Diesel scooped me up and set me in the backseat of the helicopter. He took the seat next to Boon and passed me a headset with a microphone.

“Buckle up and put the headset on so we can talk to each other,” Diesel said.

Boon fired the bird, we lifted off the ground, and my heart rate went to stroke level. I closed my eyes and chanted the rosary. This from a woman who hadn’t been to church in three years, and then it was just for Christmas Mass because my mother had made me.

“Open your eyes,” Diesel said over the headset. “Help me look for a clearing where someone could launch a rocket.”

We’d been in the air for five minutes and hadn’t plummeted to the ground in a smoking fireball, so I dredged up some courage, held my breath, and peeked out the window.

Diesel’s voice was in my ear again. “You have to breathe. And stop thinking about flaming, twisted debris and body parts spread over the Barrens.”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“Yeah, and it’s creepy.”

Boon was flying grids, high enough for us to see a large area, low enough to pick out details. We passed over Gail Scanlon’s house and the monkey habitat. It looked untouched. The door to the habitat was still open. No vehicles in the yard. No monkeys. No Carl. The thought made my heart constrict. It was much easier to understand the Barrens from our bird’s-eye view. We could get a better picture of how the paths connected and led to campsites and abandoned homesteads. There were plenty of clearings, but none that held any real interest. We didn’t see any rocket launchpads. We saw a number of cabins and double-wides that looked occupied. A car in the driveway of one. Smoke curling from the chimney of another. Not a lot of activity. A truck bounced along a rutted road leading to a little house with chickens scratching around in the front yard.

“Fly over this area again,” Diesel said to Boon. “I know it’s here, and somehow we’re missing it.”

“Maybe it’s not in this area,” Boon said. “Maybe the rockets get trucked in. Remember when we were in Columbia?”

“I hate that idea,” Diesel said. “That makes my life much more complicated. They could truck them in from anywhere.”

“I don’t think they’re that far away,” I said. “Munch was in Gail Scanlon’s neighborhood on his ATV.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Boon asked Diesel.

“Wulf is hanging with a guy named Martin Munch, a genius working with electromagnetic waves. All of a sudden Munch’s project manager is dead…”

“Twisted neck?” Boon asked.

“Yeah. And now Wulf’s got the manager’s sister. I’m guessing Munch made some sort of discovery, and Wulf is intrigued by it.”

“Had to be some badass discovery to get Wulf into the Pine Barrens. Wulf is more Vienna, Paris, Dubai,” Boon said.

“I think they must be using the Barrens for research,” Diesel said. “There’s lots of space here, and it’s close to areas where Munch has sources for materials.”

“How much space does Munch need to do research?”

“I don’t know,” Diesel said. “Could be as small as a room or as large as a barn. He’d need a source of electric. Maybe a generator. If he didn’t want to be picked up by he li cop ter surveillance, he’d need a garage for his ATV. He’d need a decent road to truck stuff in.”

“We haven’t seen anything as big as a barn,” Boon said. “A generator could be hidden under tree cover. There was a ranch house with an attached garage. There was a double-wide with a couple outbuildings. Both had dirt roads connecting them to civilization.”

“Enlarge the grid,” Diesel said. “Fly us around a little more, then we’ll head back to the airport.”

WE WERE IN the Subaru, watching Boon lift off and head for Atlantic City. Lucky him, I thought. Boon was going to the land of the endless buffet, and I was still stuck in the Barrens. It was early afternoon, and I knew Diesel was itching to mount up and check out some houses.

“I’m not doing anything until you feed me,” I said.

“How elaborate does this meal have to be?”

“Just get me some food.”

Ten minutes later, Diesel pulled into a gas station and handed me a twenty. “I’ll do the gas, you do the food,” he said.

“Boy, you really know how to treat a girl right.”

“Now what? Would you rather pump the gas?”

I played the vending machines and came away with a couple granola bars, a couple snack packs of peanuts, two Little Debbie cakes, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, an assortment of gummi bears, and two bottles of water.

I got back into the SUV and put the bag between the two front seats. Diesel looked in the bag and took one of the Reese’s.

“I thought for sure you’d go for the granola bar,” I said.

“No way.”

“Ranger would take the granola bar.”

“And Morelli?”

“The peanuts.”

“And what about you?” Diesel asked.

“The cake.”

He put the SUV in gear and turned onto the road. “I knew it would be the cake.”

I ate one of the cakes, the remaining Reese’s, and the peanuts while Diesel drove. He’d picked out five houses he thought deserved a closer look, and he was searching for the best road in to the properties. We were in the heart of the Barrens, and I was bleary-eyed with the monotony. Scrub pines, sand, and some high-bush cranberries. I couldn’t imagine how Diesel was finding his way without a Taco Bell to serve as a landmark. Remembering to turn right at the large pine wasn’t going to do it for me.

“Here we go,” he said, swerving off the paved road onto hard-packed dirt.

He drove for a quarter mile on the dirt road and parked in a small clearing. We got out of the SUV and off-loaded the ATVs. The sky was growing darker by the minute, hanging just above the treetops.

I tipped my head back and studied the cloud cover. “This doesn’t look good.”

“No, but I can’t let rain stop me. I’m running out of time. I can’t see Wulf hanging in the Barrens much longer. Even with the proximity of Atlantic City, it’s not going to hold his attention. If the technology is worth something to him, he’ll move Munch to a more obscure location and lock him down. And then Wulf will find a more entertaining environment.”

“Then let’s do it. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor lack of a bathroom will stop me.”

I followed Diesel’s ATV down the dirt road. There were several forks, but Diesel knew his route. He slowed just before he came to the first house and went off-road into the pines. We parked the ATVs and moved in on foot. The house was more decrepit than it had appeared from the air. The yellow paint was faded and peeling. The small front porch sagged. Its step had been replaced by a cinder block. A tricked-out Ford pickup was parked in the yard not far from the front door to the house.

We skirted the house and looked in the garage window. The garage was wall-to-wall junk. A rusted washing machine, stacks of newspapers, a bed mattress with the innards spilling out from a huge rip in the middle. There was a mountain of big plastic bags, which I suspected from the smell leaking out of the garage contained garbage. We walked around back and looked in the kitchen window. The kitchen looked a lot like the garage.