Free Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) by Carla Norton Page B

some effort, but the floorboards come free. He sets them aside.
    Inside, he finds the stun gun, a set of handcuffs, and two types of high-powered binoculars. Here’s the rifle with plenty of ammunition, and a full selection of fine knives, still sharp. He pauses to admire the blades, glinting in the light. A knife is not as good as a scalpel, but these aren’t bad.
    “Ultimately, none of this stuff is going to do me any good,” Walter Wertz had said to him one day long ago. “I might as well enjoy it while I can, right? Because once the dialysis starts, it’s all downhill. They won’t put me at the top of any donors list. And when my kidneys start to fail, I’m a dead man.”
    “Come on, you’re not that old,” Flint had said. “Don’t be fatalistic.”
    “Realistic. We both know it’s the truth. I saw what happened to my father. It’s genetic, Daryl. The same thing’s gonna happen to me.”
    Flint’s antennae had gone up. He smelled opportunity. His older partner had money, property, resources. Why let it all go to waste? So, over the next few weeks, Flint had coaxed him along. “You’re the end of the line, eh? That’s a shame, isn’t it? If only there was a way of passing along the family legacy, you know? I mean, you worked hard for all this.
We
worked hard for all this.”
    Flint planted the seeds so subtly that Wertz thought it was his idea. “What would you think of taking over once I’m gone, Daryl? You’d be, like, my heir. That would be fitting, wouldn’t it?”
    Flint had feigned surprise. “That’s hard to imagine. But if anybody could make a crazy idea like that work, it’d be you.”
    It hadn’t taken much effort to draw Wertz along, one detail after another, until the idea began to take form.
    “It’s the ultimate bug-out plan,” Wertz announced one day, handing him a large metal box. “When my kidneys give out, you can just step into my shoes. No paperwork, no trail. What do you think? We’ll call it Plan B.”
    This was classic Wertz. He always had a plan. Plan A was business as usual; Plan B was the bug-out plan; and Plan C was always ready in case they had to drop everything and run north across the border to Canada. Three plans ready, just in case.
    Of course, Flint’s arrest hadn’t been in anybody’s plans.
    He’d loaded his little cricket into the trunk of his car, trying to move her on a rainy night, and hadn’t even seen the car that hit him. The next thing he knew, he was behind bars.
    His bad luck.
    Now Flint lifts the metal box from its hiding place and opens the latch. Inside, he finds cash, credit cards, and keys to Wertz’s house in Olympia. Here are the horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He grins at the bifocals, squinting through the clear glass at the top, the minor magnification through the lens at the bottom.
    Next, he lifts out a messy wig and places it atop his head. He’ll need a mirror to do it right. He sets the wig aside.
    At the bottom of the box, he finds several pairs of panties—which he lifts out to sniff one by one—and a driver’s license with a photograph of a bushy-haired guy with heavy eyebrows and horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
    Walter Wertz has left it all to him.
    He sets aside what he’ll need and closes the trap door. He’ll make himself comfortable for the night and rest up for tomorrow. Then he’ll order his tasks, take inventory. Once the cabin is ready he’ll head into Olympia and get Plan B underway.
    He sets the lantern on the table and heads back outside to unload his gear. He’s methodical. Back and forth, back and forth, his boots loud on the wood floor.
    When he’s finished, he stands in the middle of the room and taps a toe three times, enjoying the sound so much that he does a quick jig, chanting, “Off the grid, off the grid, off the grid.”

FOURTEEN
     
University of California
Berkeley, California
    T he moment the professor stops speaking, Reeve snaps her laptop shut and checks her phone for news about Flint. The first