It’s Just Me. Page 4:

Satellite.

Damn!

Why didn’t I think of it earlier? I leapt up from the couch and bounded from the room, running along the dark hallway and into my bedroom. In my overnight bag was a satellite phone. I scrambled through the bag in the dark. Eventually I turned the bedside lamp on, it didn’t really help much but I couldn’t be bothered standing up to turn on the main light. 

Laziness.

I found my satellite phone and turned it on. It was fully charged. Why did I even bother with my cell phone in the first place? 

I took my cell phone from my pocket and hoped I could use the weak signal to transfer the picture of Mac from my cell to the sat-phone. After a bit of fiddling about and trying to line it up correctly to enable the Bluetooth to connect I managed. I sent the picture from my sat-phone to Lee. Five minutes later he text me, Okay to call you? 

I replied, yes.

He called me immediately.

“You all right out there?” Lee asked.

“I’m okay…”

“Nothing changes, huh?” Lee replied. Laughter was evident in his voice.

“Not much,” I agreed. “The dead return and I’m okay.”

“About that – we’ve run those prints through AFIS and every other data base I could think of, and I’ve got the analysis back on the water…”

“And?”

That was when I realized I was holding my breath.

“Not Mac. The prints weren’t in the system at all. The water was… pure water.”

Air rushed past my teeth.

“But they were prints?”

“Oh yeah they were.”

Good to know. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what I’d lifted from the packet that night. 

“We ran them against all Grange tour personnel too. No match.”

“So it was a hallucination, or someone who looks very like Mac but has never had their prints taken for any reason?”

“Quite a coincidence.”