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Joseph smiles and taps his temple. "Magic powers."
I can't figure out if he's having me on, or if he honestly claims to have special powers.
He chuckles. "I was pulling your leg. My brother works at the Marble Canyon Airport, and he alerted me when you chartered a private helicopter ride. Tyler had never seen a Scotsman before, much less two of you. He was kind of excited."
"Donnae understand," I say. "Have you been tracking us ever since the helicopter dropped us off?"
"No. I was curious whether Munro was one of the Scots that Tyler saw. So I leveraged my contacts to find out if there had been any sightings of a beastly Scotsman on the river. Your pilot buddy was seen loading the inflatable raft into the chopper."
"It was in a cardboard box. How could anyone know what it was?"
Joseph grins. "It said 'inflatable raft' on the side of the box."
I hadn't noticed that. Am I losing my touch? I'm the man who solves puzzles, but I failed to notice the large words on a large box.
"You didn't come here just to have a riverside chat," Munro says.
"No. I thought I should warn you. Somebody else knows you're in the canyon, and they've been tracking you." Joseph shoves his hands into his trouser pockets. "I don't know who it is, but this man might've planted a GPS chip on your raft or maybe in your backpack."
"Who told you that?"
"It's a secondhand rumor, but my brother heard from one of the guys who works for Peter Heymans that Peter happened to see a stranger milling around by the chopper right before you guys turned up."
Munro crosses his arms over his chest and stares out at the river. "Donnae suppose you brought a bug detector."
"What do you think?" He pulls a device out of his back pocket. It looks like a small black box with an antenna sticking up from it. He hands the device to Munro. "This will detect any tracking devices, including GPS trackers."
Munro takes the device. "Thank you, Joey."
"Gotta go. I'm giving some tourists a joy ride down the river starting at the Phantom Ranch Boat Beach." Joseph and Munro shake hands. "Be careful, hey? And give me a call on your satellite phone if you need any backup."
The bloke ambles back to his raft and starts up the motor, heading toward the opposite shore.
"You have a satellite phone?" I ask Munro.
"Aye. Mobiles don't work in the canyon." He turns toward me. "Someone is watching us. Who have ye rubbed the wrong way this time, Errol?"
"No one. I haven't done anything lately except try to chase Ashley away."
My cousin arches one brow. "I see that worked out well."
"She finally brought me round to her way of thinking." I sling an arm around Ashley's waist to pull her close. "Now we're partners, in every way."
"I see." Munro turns toward our raft. "Best check for tracking devices."
"Can I help?"
"One-man job, laddie. You and the lass should go on contemplating where we ought to search next."
Ashley and I go back to studying the new map, and we agree that the sandbar shown on satellite images must be the brownish, oblong feature represented on the drawing. We also agree we should stop there to search.
Munro finds a miniature GPS tracker hidden on the raft, tucked under one of the seats. He tosses it onto the ground and stomps on the thing until it shatters. We might've noticed that tracker if we had bent over to look, but we had no reason to do that. I could never have guessed that someone would try to track me—or Ashley. Maybe she's the target, though I suspect it's me.
"What about your satellite phone?" I ask Munro. "Could that have a tracker on it too?"
"Joey said the person who planted the tracker was seen doing that before we stowed our gear in the helicopter. My satellite phone hasn't been out of my control since I left my house." He glances down at the destroyed tracker. "But I did scan the entire raft and our packs. No other trackers were detected."
Just to be safe, Munro scans me and Ashley for trackers. We're clean. He had already scanned himself while searching the raft, so we climb in and continue our journey down the river. We stop at the sandbar Ashley thought might be clue on the map, beaching our raft at the eastern end so we can get out and look around. Ashley suggests the sandbar is an arrow pointing us in the right direction. After searching through the binoculars, though, we agree that the sandbar is probably on the map solely to tell whoever possessed the map that they're on the right track. The Ellsworth map had included notations for caves, but those must have, ah, caved in a long time ago. We hadn't found any of those on our journey. The second map has been harder to interpret.
