The Masked Man. B.J. Daniels

say in the morning about nine? I have a little place down the lake where I raise a few buffalo.”

      Little. Right. Mac sighed impatiently. “I told you—”

      “You’re already on another job. Yes, you told me.” Pierce picked up a plain black videotape from beside the recliner. Mac hadn’t noticed that Pierce had put it there. “Take a look at this. If you still aren’t interested…” Pierce shrugged and tossed Mac the tape.

      Mac caught it and watched Pierce leave. He stood there, listening to Pierce retreat down the old wooden dock until the footfalls became too faint to hear. Then he looked down with apprehension at the videotape in his hand.

      What the hell was on this? Something that Nathaniel Pierce was confident would change Mac’s mind about the job offer.

      That alone was enough to make Mac nervous as hell. But to find Pierce sitting in the dark on the houseboat drinking beer, waiting…

      Mac walked over to the VCR, turned on the TV, popped in the tape and hit Play. The images were blurred, everything a grainy black and white. The tape appeared to be a security surveillance video.

      In the soundless recording were three people. Two wore ski masks, one of whom carried a sledgehammer. A third stood just out of the camera’s view, but part of that person’s shadow could be seen against the side wall.

      Mac watched as the one with the sledgehammer worked to break through some expensive-looking wood. The other man in the ski mask had his back to the camera. The third appeared to be just watching, but the other two would glance back at him from time to time and say something Mac couldn’t make out.

      After a few minutes the hammer had made a large hole in what appeared to be a hidden compartment in the wall. The other masked man pushed the one with the sledgehammer out of the way and took a metal box from inside the compartment. The box looked to be about eight inches square and three or four inches deep. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the hole in the wall because the men turned and left, disappearing from the camera’s lens.

      The videotape flickered, and the setting changed to outdoors. An old Ford van, dark in color, sat with the engine running, and the driver’s face was captured on film. He was watching out the windshield, looking very young and very nervous. He was the only one not wearing a mask.

      An instant later the two men in ski masks emerged from the house and ran toward the van. As they ran, they ripped off their masks. Mac’s heart stopped.

      One of the men was Mac’s nineteen-year-old nephew Shane Ramsey, who was supposed to be in Whitefish with Mac’s sister.

      The other man running toward the getaway van was Trevor Forester.