target. And dammit, he wished he hadn’t.
A kid. Not even ten, if he was guessing right. Someone had involved a child in this—had used a child in this. It wasn’t the first time, but it always struck him as low.
Only a few people knew that the makers of Smoky Mountain Magic were using geocaching puzzle caches to make their drops with the dealers in Atlanta. They buried the drug in watertight containers and then used stolen cell phones to notify their buyers of the waypoint using ciphers. The buyers would then pay for that “shipment” by burying money and the required cold pills—the key ingredient—for the next batch at a different waypoint, notify the sellers, using ciphers, then exchange keys, and on it went. They used different locations every time.
At first the drug trafficking organizations had been willing to play along and let the cooks stay incognito using their little games because they weren’t producing massive quantities. But the buyers realized the stuff was so potent that they could cut it down until it was really cheap and still good quality. The boys in the chem. lab said it was 99.99% pure, which was impossible. Thus the name: Smoky Mountain Magic.
So now everyone was after the cooks, either to eliminate the competition or get the recipe or both. He just wanted to shut them down before anyone else, for a lot of reasons.
So here he sat feeling sick, but now it wasn’t the damn disease. He couldn’t blame coincidence for this one. The agency had gotten their hands on some of the cache locations, as well as some of the encrypted clues left to lead the buyers to them—complicated ciphers that couldn’t be broken without a key. And they had intercepted text messages with what seemed to be keys, but not keys to the ciphers they had. Nothing matched up. The locations they had apparently weren’t related to the clues they had, and the keys were for other ciphers they didn’t have. Their best people couldn’t make the puzzle pieces fit together.
But of course, Nick couldn’t resist the challenge. He had reached into all the evidence and come up with this mountain. And, despite the fact that Nick’s boss was hoping he was wrong, he would bet his life—what was left of it—that Jamie Lynn Campbell was going to hand him the key to the whole puzzle.
A ten-year-old kid and the daughter of one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.
Damn it all to hell.
Grace was tempted to use a few choice expletives as she reviewed the results again, but the story was the same. Despite slowing the rate of growth, she was still impacting the active compounds. Not as significantly as before, but still far above the standards, even for Woodruff’s products. And enough to be noticed and remarked on. It was a risk she couldn’t take. The biogenetic testing was going to be risky enough.
So, if they were going to start production again she would have to consider hiring someone else to deal with the herbs—keeping herself away from that side of the business, at least until they were harvested. At first she had thought wearing gloves religiously—never touching the living plants or roots with her bare hands—would work. But now it seemed to happen if she was anywhere near them.
They could rearrange the process so that she could stay away from the growing plants. Turn everything upside down to accommodate this so-called gift.
Then again, she could always leave the mountain. Go hide somewhere else.
But what if the same thing happens with people?
Panicky voices started chattering in her head. They were the same voices that had sent her on that mad careening drive from Chapel Hill to the mountain and kept her up here for the past few months wearing gloves and shying away from their guests. She was acting like some demented hermit, dreaming wild dreams and even thinking about hiding out in a cave. She leaned on the lab bench.
Calm down, Grace. You are going to learn how to control it. You are learning
A kid. Not even ten, if he was guessing right. Someone had involved a child in this—had used a child in this. It wasn’t the first time, but it always struck him as low.
Only a few people knew that the makers of Smoky Mountain Magic were using geocaching puzzle caches to make their drops with the dealers in Atlanta. They buried the drug in watertight containers and then used stolen cell phones to notify their buyers of the waypoint using ciphers. The buyers would then pay for that “shipment” by burying money and the required cold pills—the key ingredient—for the next batch at a different waypoint, notify the sellers, using ciphers, then exchange keys, and on it went. They used different locations every time.
At first the drug trafficking organizations had been willing to play along and let the cooks stay incognito using their little games because they weren’t producing massive quantities. But the buyers realized the stuff was so potent that they could cut it down until it was really cheap and still good quality. The boys in the chem. lab said it was 99.99% pure, which was impossible. Thus the name: Smoky Mountain Magic.
So now everyone was after the cooks, either to eliminate the competition or get the recipe or both. He just wanted to shut them down before anyone else, for a lot of reasons.
So here he sat feeling sick, but now it wasn’t the damn disease. He couldn’t blame coincidence for this one. The agency had gotten their hands on some of the cache locations, as well as some of the encrypted clues left to lead the buyers to them—complicated ciphers that couldn’t be broken without a key. And they had intercepted text messages with what seemed to be keys, but not keys to the ciphers they had. Nothing matched up. The locations they had apparently weren’t related to the clues they had, and the keys were for other ciphers they didn’t have. Their best people couldn’t make the puzzle pieces fit together.
But of course, Nick couldn’t resist the challenge. He had reached into all the evidence and come up with this mountain. And, despite the fact that Nick’s boss was hoping he was wrong, he would bet his life—what was left of it—that Jamie Lynn Campbell was going to hand him the key to the whole puzzle.
A ten-year-old kid and the daughter of one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.
Damn it all to hell.
Grace was tempted to use a few choice expletives as she reviewed the results again, but the story was the same. Despite slowing the rate of growth, she was still impacting the active compounds. Not as significantly as before, but still far above the standards, even for Woodruff’s products. And enough to be noticed and remarked on. It was a risk she couldn’t take. The biogenetic testing was going to be risky enough.
So, if they were going to start production again she would have to consider hiring someone else to deal with the herbs—keeping herself away from that side of the business, at least until they were harvested. At first she had thought wearing gloves religiously—never touching the living plants or roots with her bare hands—would work. But now it seemed to happen if she was anywhere near them.
They could rearrange the process so that she could stay away from the growing plants. Turn everything upside down to accommodate this so-called gift.
Then again, she could always leave the mountain. Go hide somewhere else.
But what if the same thing happens with people?
Panicky voices started chattering in her head. They were the same voices that had sent her on that mad careening drive from Chapel Hill to the mountain and kept her up here for the past few months wearing gloves and shying away from their guests. She was acting like some demented hermit, dreaming wild dreams and even thinking about hiding out in a cave. She leaned on the lab bench.
Calm down, Grace. You are going to learn how to control it. You are learning
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