Page 98 of The 9th Man

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“They’re similar to the email addresses,” he said, “separated by tildes.”

“I’m impressed you know the symbol’s name.”

“I’m not completely stupid.”

She smiled. “The email addresses with~sun~river. Our supposition was that Benji and Ray were using them as a coded contact system. That means one of them had to set it up. I have access to Benji’s iCloud account so I checked. He was a subscriber to an app called Find3Points. It’s owned by a company that specializes in geotech surveys. Satellite stuff. Apparently Find3Points was a lark, something the founders thought would be cool to try. It divides the earth into five-foot by five-foot grids. Every grid gets a specific, randomly generated, three-word identifier separated by a tilde sign. For example, this room might be labeledFISH~CHURCH~EDITOR.”

“Like the email addresses.”

She nodded. “I have no idea if Simmons was a subscriber, but he specifically left those five lines of words, all separated by tildes. That can’t be coincidence.”

“So let me ask the $64,000 question. Did you run those five lines through the app?”

“I bought it half an hour ago.”

“And what did they reveal?”

“All five are within a three-mile radius of one another in the northwest corner of Wyoming. A remote location.”

“Seems par for this course.”

She turned from the laptop. “We can head there in the morning. I’m assuming, with all your connections, you can get us there fast.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Maybe this David Eckstein can fill in the blanks,” she said. “I would sure like to know what Benji had to die for.”

They both still wore the hotel’s terry-cloth robes. His belly was full, he was reasonably rested from the nap, and it looked like they knew where to head next.

Good thing.

As it was all they had.

“I have been noticing something else, also,” she said.

He was all ears.

“Where’d the good little Boy Scout come from?”

He was puzzled.

“The Ranger I knew in Hawaii would have already made a move on me. But this new-and-improved Luke Daniels. He’s like a perfect gentleman. A monk in a cave.”

“You just lost your grandfather.”

“I did. And I appreciate the respect you’ve shown.” She paused and tossed him a grin. “But enough is enough.”

He wondered if either of them had the bandwidth to go there at the moment. Maybe once all this was over? But he was also never one to walk away from an offered opportunity. Why would he?

Besides, they were both grown adults.

So he smiled and said, “What did you have in mind?”

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