Haley pressed her lips together at the unfairness. Any protest from her would make things worse. She needed to save her energy.
Ramon pushed her along, and she drew in a deep breath to stop herself snapping at him. She knew, without a doubt, they were goading her so she would break. Then they’d either punish her, or they’d punish the man they believed was her husband, the man who’d saved her so many times, she didn’t know how she would ever be able to repay him. She wished they’d woken up in each other’s arms without anyone being hurt or dying. But wishes would get her nowhere, and she had to concentrate on reality.
Quentin followed, and she noticed his shadow move directly behind her, protecting her again, the only way he could from the man with the shovey hands.
Children played in the dirt, chasing lizards with sticks. A dog walked alongside her for a few strides before heading off to join the children in their lizard hunt. She wanted to stroke that dog so badly…
She glanced around. Some of the structures were more substantial than others. One building was sturdy and wooden, men lounging around on hammocks and on the steps. An older, more ramshackle house built on stilts sat back from the main village—if you could call it a village. The house had a thatched roof and what had probably once been an actual lawn before being reclaimed by the jungle.
They arrived at some huts on the edge of the camp that were being used as a latrine. Quentin entered one side, and the guard pointed her towards the one a few feet away that was obviously for women.
Her stomach turned at the stench, and she gagged. Bile rose in her throat. Flies buzzed. There was a wooden board with a hole in it. She had to toughen up. She pulled her shorts down and sat, keeping herself covered as much as possible with Quentin’s t-shirt, aware of the gimlet eye of the guard peering through a narrow gap in the rushes. She wanted to throw up but her whole life, she’d kept telling people how tough she was. She wasn’t going to let the lack of toilet facilities or a voyeuristic pervert get her down.
A bowl of water sat nearby with a scoop that she used to rinse herself off as best she could. It meant her shorts got a little damp, but the heat was so overwhelming that was okay. They’d soon dry.
“Hurry.” The mean voice barked into the small hut. He was mad she hadn’t given him more of a show but thankfully, Quentin’s shirt provided good coverage.
She rinsed her hands with the scoop and wondered how thirsty she’d have to be to drink the water out of that bowl. She wasn’t there yet, but the headache was building, and dehydration in this climate would kill her sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t take long.
Everything she ate and drank could potentially cause her to get sick here. She’d kept up to date with all her vaccines and boosters, but her body wasn’t resilient to the bugs and bacteria that the locals had grown up with. Even a bad case of diarrhea could kill her. A mosquito buzzed in the dank air of the toilet—another insidious threat. Her malaria pills were back at the hotel, burned to a crisp.
An image of that man being shot in front of them on the lawn, of all the victims in the bar last night, flashed through her brain in vivid technicolor. She pushed aside the memory. Couldn’t deal with it right now. They were people she’d known professionally, had competed with. People she’d both liked and disliked on a personal basis. She didn’t know what this would mean for their industry as a whole. She couldn’t even think about that right now. She would mourn for them as soon as she had the mental space to do so, but the industry would have to sort itself out without her in the meantime.
For her and Savage, their current existence was all about survival, doing and saying whatever it took to make it through the next encounter. She pressed her lips together as she exited the latrine and found Quentin waiting for her. His concerned gaze warmed her, and she swallowed at the dryness in her throat.
He had no idea how much he’d come to mean to her in such a short amount of time. With him by her side, she had no doubt she’d get through this, but without him?
Without him she didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter Eleven
It had been an infinitely long trip but, finally, Eban had reached the paradise that, for so many, had morphed into a nightmare. He walked slowly toward the still smoldering ruins of what, according to the website, had been a beautiful, luxury hotel, a converted Dutch-colonial mansion that had survived WWII and the fierce fights for independence in its wake. But it hadn’t survived a security symposium attacked by a group of armed terrorists.
Who was responsible?
And why?
Where was Quentin? Was he alive or dead?
These were the questions that filled his head and swirled along with the anger and grief that wanted to pummel him. But he wore his game face. He was a professional.
Paper booties covered his shoes, and nitrile gloves made his hands sweat. Under the circumstances, it was a miracle the crime scene had been even vaguely preserved.
It was afternoon, and the sun set early in this part of the world. The Indonesian military were setting up what looked like massive stadium lights so that the forensic teams could start recovering human remains as soon as it was deemed safe to go inside the main structure of the hotel. A blackened beam crashed to the ground, underscoring the weakness of the structure and the danger to those embarking on the search.
At the start of the week, Eban had glibly offered to take his boss’s place at this conference. Looking around at the evidence of a massacre, he was glad Quentin hadn’t accepted his request.
Several bodies lay strewn around the grounds, bloodstains marking their method of murder. Eban went from one corpse to another, each time bracing himself to find the body of a boss he liked and respected. A man he considered a friend.
An FBI photographer accompanied him, the flash on the camera blinding Eban every time the man took a snap, shocking his retinas the same way the brutal slaughter shocked his soul.
Images were being sent straight back to the States via satellite and run through facial recognition programs. Video was being streamed direct to SIOC where a team worked the leads.
The FBI’s legal attaché to the region, Reid Armstrong, was watching the proceedings while talking to an official from the local police. Voices were raised, and Eban glanced over, hoping he wouldn’t have to break up a fistfight.
Emotions were running high, and the US Government wanted swift and forceful action to be taken to bring the terrorists to justice. The US was happy and ready to help if the Indonesians couldn’t carry that out on their own. The warship sitting in the bay emphasized the point.
Max Hawthorne, a negotiator and friend from CNU who’d been based in Jakarta for the past six weeks, was also walking the scene with another photographer, looking for Savage’s body while trying to identify other victims.
Eban returned to his grim task.
Because there were so many dead Americans, the FBI was jointly running the investigation with Indonesian counterparts. Crime labs here were helping out and providing laboratory facilities where necessary. Only three survivors had been found so far, one local who was in critical condition with a bullet in the head, an American woman who’d been put in an induced medical coma to give her the best possible chance of survival, and another man with a nasty concussion and a gunshot wound that wasn’t life threatening. He was under armed guard in the hospital, the only living and conscious witness to what had happened here last night.
Another man had stumbled back from a bar in the nearest town, so drunk he could barely walk straight. The sight of the raging fire and dead bodies had sobered him up fast, and he and his taxi driver had done an about-face and gone straight back to town.
Someone needed to question the guy ASAP.
The top ballistics expert in the FBI was measuring trajectories and marking the location of different rounds. Considering it looked like a war zone out here, the man had his work cut out. Shell casings and bullets were being systematically collected for ballistic and trace evidence
analysis. It was doubtful the terrorists’ fingerprints or DNA were on file, but when the bastards were found, and they would find them, it would help with their criminal conviction.
Indonesia believed in capital punishment.
The noxious smell of burnt meat and toxic smoke laced the air. Eban found himself wanting the assholes to pay the ultimate price, so long as they caught the right culprits.
He and the photographer kept walking. Skirting the manicured lawn until they reached the back of the property, which looked out over the ocean. The scenery was spectacular, except for another murdered man lying on the lawn—shot in the back as he’d tried to escape. Tall, lanky, dark-haired, lying face down in the short grass.
Eban clenched his fingers and braced himself as the photographer took pictures before they gently turned the guy over.
Flies buzzed, and a wave of nausea engulfed Eban at the stench. Decomp came on fast in the tropics, and he made himself examine the features carefully to be sure. But it wasn’t Quentin. It wasn’t his boss. Thank god.
He straightened.
That was it. They’d checked all the corpses so far found on the grounds. Searching the hotel ruins was going to take longer, and the chances of any of the victims being anything except blackened corpses was remote at best.
He called McKenzie at SIOC, even though he had no doubt it would be a bad time. He couldn’t remember the time difference and didn’t much care that the guy was probably in bed.
“Did you find him?” McKenzie answered immediately, his voice low with concern.
“Negative.” Eban looked out over the sea that glistened in the sunshine. Not long ago, Quentin had probably stood here and admired this exact same view. “Tell me where he said he was when you spoke to him.”
“I wrote it down. Hang on.” There was a rustle and a knock as if McKenzie were putting something heavy on a table. “Okay, on the beach, beneath the hotel cell tower. Wait. Actually, he said near the beach.”
Eban looked east. The cell tower stood proudly on top of a nearby hill, the highest point of this particular part of the island. He scanned the horizon and saw a multitude of small isles dotted in the distance.
Despite being the world’s fourth most populous country, nine thousand of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands were uninhabited. More than 255 million people lived in the place that was more a collection of diverse cultures than a unified country. As if to make things even more exciting, volcanoes marched across the region, any number of which could erupt at any moment.
That factoid reminded him of Darby O’Roarke, a graduate student volcanologist who’d been kidnapped a few days ago from an island in the Banda Sea.
Was that related?
Seemed unlikely, considering the attackers had mown down so many potential hostages indiscriminately, but Indonesia was a predominantly safe country. Exactly how many independent pockets of terrorists were there? He needed to know how many groups were active at this moment in time. The legat should know the answer to that question.
“I’ll go check out the area he mentioned now,” Eban told McKenzie, who remained silent on the line, both of them contemplating the long odds of Quentin being one of the few to survive this atrocity.
“He was with Haley Cramer,” McKenzie reminded him. “Her business partners want in on any information that pertains to her.”
“We can’t share information on an open investigation,” Eban argued.
“This time we can. Alex Parker is an FBI consultant and, if anyone can find them using electronic communications, it will be him or his team. Trust me, we need to work with this guy.”
That was assuming Quentin and Haley Cramer were lost and not in the blackened shell of the hotel. Eban scratched at his skull as a mosquito tried to suck out his brains.
“I’ll let you know if I find anything.” He hung up. It was easier to be coolly professional than to really think about what he was looking for. A corpse. The body of one of his best friends.
Chances were small Quentin was alive. If he was, he’d have come out of hiding the moment Eban and the other Feds arrived. Quentin was either dead, unconscious, or he’d been taken.
“I need to go search the forest down by the beach. You ready?” Eban asked the photographer.
The guy looked around. “Let’s bring some others with us in case we run into a tiger.”
Eban firmed his lips and hoped the guy was joking. “Tigers are the least of our worries.”
He waved Hawthorne and his ERT tech over to join them, and the four agents headed down a narrow path in the general direction of the cell tower.
“Lot of tracks heading in this direction,” Hawthorne noted. The federal agent was a former SAS soldier who had been a dual British/American citizen. He’d joined the Bureau after spending time in the States training FBI agents in close-quarter protection techniques. Hawthorne could read tracking sign better than anyone Eban knew.
Eban let him go ahead. They all had flashlights, which they flicked on to help combat the shadows beneath the thick canopy.
“Oh, yeah,” the former Brit said. “Lots of people came this way. Do we know the direction from which the attack took place?”
“We know almost nothing,” Eban stated bluntly, “except a lot of people died, and the wounds weren’t self-inflicted.”
Hawthorne nodded. “My guess is the attackers came from this direction. Probably landed boats on the beach. The alternative is a helicopter ride, but that would have lost them the element of surprise, and more people would have scattered into the woods to hide.”
Eban carefully followed Hawthorne so they didn’t trample all the potential evidence, even though he wasn’t sure what it might tell them. After about five minutes, the trees thinned out, and he could see the beach. He paused.
“Savage was supposed to be hiding in the woods at the base of the hill.” He swept the powerful flashlight over the underbrush in that direction. Something brassy glinted on the forest floor. He and Hawthorne moved cautiously through the foliage. The photographers shot film every step of the way.
It was a bullet belt. They needed to get that to the lab.
“Looks like some sort of confrontation happened over here. Look at all the flattened bushes and broken leaves,” Hawthorne said with a frown.
Eban spotted a bare human foot sticking out from beneath a fern. He couldn’t swallow the trepidation that crowded his throat and prevented him from breathing.
The photographers took pictures. Hawthorne found a stick and used it to push aside the branches.
Air rushed out of Eban’s lungs when he saw it wasn’t Quentin. Two male bodies, stripped of some clothing but not naked, lay there in the undergrowth. No visible bullet wounds. They wore sweat-stained vests and scarves tied around necks; necks that had clearly been broken. One man was missing his trousers and footwear.
Eban stood back to let the photographers in to take pictures to send back to HQ. “Two of the attackers, do you think?”
Hawthorne squatted beside the bodies. “They have some tattoos I want a better look at.” The photographers got in closer, and Hawthorne rolled the body enough to provide a better shot.
“Someone broke their necks.” Eban scouted the nearby area but didn’t find anything else.
“Let’s check out the beach,” Hawthorne suggested.
Eban nodded and followed his colleagues.
Who’d killed the two men? Savage? This woman Haley Cramer? Someone else?
Where were they?
Eban blew out a frustrated breath. It would take days to search the brush properly. Maybe the Indonesian government would let the US Navy assist. Give the sailors something useful to do.
They hit the beach, and Hawthorne held out his arm to stop them going any farther.
“Drag marks over there. Two boats. Get some images,” he told the photographers. The two men started down the beach, ranging out to the side before cautiously moving forward.
They got twenty feet before one called out.
“I got a handgun and some blood here.” His flash lit up the objects in the sand. “A couple of cell phones too.”
Bingo.
Eban had to hold himself back from running as he and Hawthorne swiftly joined the other men. As soon as the photographer had enough snaps, Eban bent down and carefully picked up one cell phone by its outer edge and placed it in a clear evidence bag.
Hawthorne did the same with the other phone. Eban recognized Quentin’s work cell. It was tempting to turn it on, but he didn’t want to mess up anything for the tech guys.
“Let’s collect the blood and pistol, and we’ll get more evidence recovery people down here to see if they can salvage anything else.” It was a miracle it hadn’t rained in the last twenty-four hours, but the miracle wouldn’t last much longer.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Hawthorne asked quietly.
Eban stared out at the seemingly endless ocean. “That they took Quentin and this Cramer woman with them?” Eban met the other man’s worried gaze and nodded. “Yeah, I think I am. And now we have to find them.”
Chapter Twelve
Quentin didn’t speak as they were paraded like prize cattle back through the makeshift village. He exaggerated the pain in his ribs and shuffled tiredly, wanting to appear weaker than he currently was. He could probably overpower the one guard, but he wasn’t sure he could overpower him without the asshole crying out for assistance or getting a shot off from the AK he held so casually in his hands.
And if they attempted an escape and failed, their captors would beat the living shit out of him. Not that it’d been fun so far, but he was keenly aware from all the reports he’d read over the years that he and Haley had gotten off relatively easy. He still had his head, and she hadn’t been violently assaulted.
Yet.
He had no doubt the threat to disfigure Haley was genuine, but it was also designed to keep them fearful and compliant. Follow the rules or bad things would happen. As if they needed a reminder after last night.
Colder Than Sin (Cold Justice - Crossfire: FBI Romantic Suspense Book 2) Page 10
