Free The Camel Club by David Baldacci Page A

like
that
.”
    “I know, Milton. None of us do.”
    Stone and Milton rose together. With a sigh of relief Reuben followed them to the path leading to their boat.
    Warren Peters, who’d fired the shot that killed Patrick Johnson, was walking along the trail back to their dinghy when he stopped short.
    “Shit!” he whispered.
    “What?” Tyler Reinke asked as he nervously looked around. “Police boat?”
    “No, almost a big mistake.” Peters scooped up some dirt and pebbles in his hand. “When we dunked him, it cleaned his shoe soles off. If he walked here through the woods, his soles wouldn’t be clean. The FBI won’t miss that.”
    The two men hurried back along the path and over to the body. Peters squatted down next to the murdered man’s shoes and pressed dirt and pebbles into the soles.
    “Good catch,” Reinke said.
    “I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened if I’d blown that.” He finished his task and started to rise, but his gaze caught on something.
    “Son of a bitch!” Peters exclaimed between clenched teeth. He pointed to the note he had pressed into the victim’s pocket: A corner of it was sticking out. “I shoved that all the way in because I didn’t want it to look too obvious. So why’s it visible now?” He pushed the note back in the pocket and looked at his partner searchingly.
    “Could an animal have taken a go at the body?”
    “After a few minutes? And why would an animal go after paper instead of flesh?” He rose, pulled a flashlight from his pocket and checked the stone floor.
    Reinke said, “You must’ve made a mistake with the paper. You probably didn’t push it in as far as you thought.”
    Peters continued to search the area and then stiffened.
    “What now?” his companion asked impatiently.
    “Listen, do you hear that?”
    Reinke remained still and silent and then his mouth gaped.
    “Somebody running. That way!” He pointed to the right, down one of the trails in the opposite direction they had come.
    The two men pulled their weapons and sprinted toward the sound.

CHAPTER
10
    S TONE AND THE OTHERS HAD JUST jumped into their boat and pushed off. The fog was now dense enough to make navigation tricky. They were perhaps ten feet from the island in the Little Channel when the two men burst out of the trees and saw them.
    “Pull as hard as you can and keep your face turned down,” Stone said to Reuben, who needed no such prompting. His broad shoulders and thick arms moved with a Herculean effort, and the little boat sprang away from the shore.
    Stone turned to the others in the boat and whispered, “Don’t let them see your faces. Caleb, take off your hat!” They all immediately bent low, and Caleb swept off his bowler and jammed it between his quivering knees. Milton had started counting the minute he climbed onto the boat. The two men on shore took aim at their quarry, but the fog made their targets very elusive. They both fired, but their shots splattered harmlessly into the water a good foot from the boat.
    “Pull, Reuben, pull,” a terrified Caleb gasped as he ducked even farther down.
    “What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Reuben snapped, sweat trickling down his face.
    The pursuers took careful aim and fired twice more. One slug found its mark, and splintered wood flew up and hit Stone in the right hand. The blood trickled down his fingers and onto the boat’s gunwale. He quickly staunched the flow with the same handkerchief he’d used to search the body of Patrick Johnson.
    “Oliver!” a frantic Milton called out.
    “I’m all right,” Stone answered. “Just stay down!”
    The two gunmen, realizing the futility of their attack, raced away.
    “They’re going to get their boat,” Stone warned.
    “Well, then we have a bit of a problem, because
their
boat has a motor,” Reuben retorted. “I’m going as fast as I can, but there’s not much gas left in my tank.”
    Stone pulled on Caleb’s sleeve. “Caleb, you take