No Mercy by John Gilstrap

Author:John Gilstrap [Gilstrap, John]
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Action & Adventure, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Espionage, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Fiction, Suspense fiction, Adventure fiction, Thrillers, suspense, Crime & Thriller, General, Thriller
ISBN: 9780786020874
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2009-06-30T05:00:00+00:00

Venice didn't try to conceal her pride for what she'd accomplished. "I knew you'd want to track the Hugheses," she said, "so I worked the problem. I was hoping that they'd done something really stupid like using their credit cards, but obviously they haven't, or the police would have been all over them. They've been pretty smart. The only record of unusual behavior is their withdrawal of twelve thousand dollars and change from their savings account. Pretty much wiped out their cash supply."

"That's their traveling money," Boxers said.

She continued, "I tried tracking the cell phones owned by each of them, but they've either turned them off or thrown them away. Either way, there's no signal to triangulate on."

Jonathan asked, "What about the number I called at the end of the 0300 mission?"

"That's one of those prepaid disposable jobs--thank God you called it, or we'd have nothing even to look for--but it's turned off, too. Even so, it got me thinking. If they know enough to keep their cell phones off and to use prepaids, then they'd probably buy more than one of them, right? One for Stephenson Hughes and one for his wife, Julie." She waited for the nods. "So, with a little help from a friend of mine in the telephone company, I did a search on the telephone numbers that were called by Stephenson's prepaid, and guess what I found?"

Jonathan feigned patience because it was easiest. "What?"

"That he called another prepaid disposable phone."

"The wife?"

"That would be my guess. Anyway, those calls--there were three of them altogether, beginning shortly after your call to Stephenson, with the last one about thirty hours ago--gave us a routing to look at."

"Where the signals began and ended," Dom explained.

Venice nodded. "Exactly. And it got interesting. The other end of the call--the receiving end in every case--was from different locations, starting in Indiana, and moving in a rough line north and east. The originating end of the calls all came from the same tower combinations in southwestern Pennsylvania."

"Pittsburgh?" Jonathan asked.

"Not Pittsburgh per se," Venice said, "but from that general area. In the mountains." She reached under the coffee table and found the atlas that Jonathan always kept there, and sear became even more animated. "That part of the state is in pretty tough shape economically. You don't have neighborhoods like we know them. Up in the mining country there are lots and lots of old homesteads, but they tend to be on big tracts of land. Dozens of acres, if not hundreds."

Jonathan found his patience waning, but he hung in there.

"I know, I know," Venice said, reading his body language. "Get to the point. Well, I am, believe it or not. Because the land tracts are so large, there are only a few that could possibly be the source of Stephenson's signal."

"Unless he's decided to bivouac," Boxers said.

Venice waved a dismissive hand. "Trust me," she said. "He didn't. He decided instead to use an old family home up there in the woods."

"His family?" Boxers asked.

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