Autumn Dreams by Gayle Roper

Author:Gayle Roper [Roper, Gayle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78165-9
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

TUCK MADE CAREFUL plans for his trip to New Jersey. It excited him to plan the perfect crime.

Ah, the zing of upping the ante.

Knowing he didn’t want to get near Sherri, didn’t want her to see him and recognize him, shooting was the obvious choice. All those years of target practice would finally pay off. He grinned. Wouldn’t Hank be pleased to know that Tuck was making such good use of one of the skills he had passed on to his son?

Knowing how intense airport security was, Tuck carefully packaged two of his guns, a rifle with a great scope and a .38 handgun, in a sturdy cardboard box filled with foam peanuts. He wound packing tape around and around and around. He took the box to the UPS store in a mall forty-five minutes away and mailed it overnight to himself at a Mail and Such store in Seaside that he’d found on the Internet.

“It won’t get there until Monday,” the clerk said. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Exactly when I need it,” he said, paying cash. As he waited for his change, he brushed the bushy mustache he wore glued to his lip.

He didn’t use his own name for his ticket purchase. He’d lifted the license and a credit card from the wallet of the guy in front of him at the bar in a dark, crowded taproom last night. The guy had been about his height and coloring, so his license picture matched Tuck’s appearance well enough, and he was drunk as a skunk, feeling no pain. Bump, lift, slip out the license and card, bump, replace. The guy would be none the wiser until it was too late to do anything about it. Tuck repeated the action at another dreary, dark bar, stealing another identity.

Again considering security, Sunday he brought nothing suspicious with him on his cross-country trip, just a backpack full of a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a heavy rugby shirt, and three changes of underwear. He wore a heavy jacket over his sweater and jeans and carried a paperback he lifted from Hank’s library, a murder mystery. He loved the private joke of it.

When he boarded his plane at the crack of dawn, he held out Ken Whalin’s license and the ticket in Ken Whalin’s name. The attendant smiled and passed him through. As he walked down the jet way, Tuck smirked. Served Ken Whalin right, wherever he was. Such identity theft was exactly why they told you not to put your wallet in your back pocket, especially in a crowd.

Tuck landed at Philadelphia International Airport with no trouble. The parents thought he was on a short vacation trip to Hawaii, and so did everyone at the office. He expected no one to call to check on him. He smiled. No one cared enough. As he passed a trash receptacle, he tossed Ken’s IDs and his return tickets inside.

At the airport car rental counter Tuck showed the second license and the MasterCard belonging to a Carl Filbert. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for Carl to face the world named after a nut.

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