Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  She stopped and she and Alex looked at each other.

  Alex’s hand gave mine a squeeze and then he stepped forward and opened his arms.

  They hugged and I was shocked to see her eyes misted.

  “I was getting horses under cover,” she whispered. “Saving them seemed more important than watching Kyle die.”

  He patted her back. “I had to leave, too,” he muttered. “They’re still there.”

  “God.” Her eyes closed for a moment, then they split and she turned away to retie her hair.

  “Anyway,” her usual voice was back when she turned around. “I was out at Pegasus Ranch helping Ellie Bernstein. She knew three of those women, couple of them quite well.” Her voice went rough with anger. “Well enough to know they’d gotten involved with their psychoanalyst.”

  She waved a hand at the files on the desk. “Guess who?”

  I stood next to her and picked up the nearest file. They were the state-required minimum information—basic patient details, overview diagnosis, start of treatment, end of treatment, recorded outcome. Four of the missing women had their files on the desk. All of them had been referred to other therapists under recorded outcome, so Tullah’s list showing all the missing women having different therapists was right. But at least four of them had come through here. Too many for coincidence, along with everything else pointing to Noble.

  Too easy? My paranoia kicked in.

  Ursula felt it. “I can’t lie to you,” she said.

  “Yeah, like Noble can’t lie to Felix.”

  I was in close enough I had to tilt my head back to look up at her. She smelled pretty much as I’d have expected from her description of her night; horses and sweat. And this near, the woman was intimidating. It wasn’t her size; she wasn’t that much bigger than Alex. But there was a feeling of power that came off her like smoke. It had the same wild tone of wolf, but it wasn’t.

  Was she another skinwalker? Was that why her eukori was so tightly bound up?

  At the thought of it, I realized my eukori was reaching out to her. I carefully put a hand on her arm and the connection seemed to come into focus.

  “What…?”

  Whether it was because I’d startled her, or the sorrow over Kyle, her eukori loosened.

  Alex pressed in behind me, worried about what I was doing. But this time, I was in control. I wasn’t trying to compel her. I just wanted to be absolutely sure.

  There were no lies in this woman. What we saw on the desk was what she’d found. She was certainly hiding things, but none of them to do with the rogue.

  I pulled back, felt both Alex and Ursula relax. Eukori wasn’t something they controlled as Were, although they instinctively understood its power. Just as I could understand their paranoia about it.

  We all stepped back, feeling awkward. To cover it, I brought Ursula swiftly up to date.

  “So, he can look like you too,” she said. “That’s…worrying.”

  I opened my mouth to answer and Noble’s phone rang.

  Not the main office phone, the private line on his desk.

  I knew immediately who it was. Combined with what Ursula had just said, I had the first sickening taste of awful premonition.

  Chapter 68

  Noble had his spider’s web set up too well. He would have had his alarm system here alert him as soon as it had been disabled, just the same as he knew exactly when we’d found his hideout in Glenmore Hills, allowing him to get there and take his truck before the FBI arrived. The truck that meant he was as mobile as we were, even with Denver snowbound.

  It was more than just a sense of foreboding as I picked the telephone up; I felt physically ill.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Congratulations, Amber. Your resourcefulness has been entertaining.”

  “Don’t call me that, you sick bastard. What do you want?”

  I had José’s number on speed dial. I put my cell on the table and started scribbling a message to Alex to get José to track the location of the call.

  “Quite simple really,” Noble said. “And you won’t even need to track my location. But first, the incentive to cooperate. I have your surrogate daughter, Emily, with me. She’s unconscious at the moment. If you insist, I can wake her up.”

  I had to lean against the table for support. My body felt too weak to contain the anger that was burning inside me. I wanted to let the wolf out and I knew I had to control that. I couldn’t afford to lose it now.

  I forced my mouth to work. “No. Just tell me what you want.”

  “As I said, very simple. You for her. No FBI, no police, no Altau. One other person.”

  His voice was different. Every time he’d spoken to me before last night, he’d used a disguise that was whatever he thought appropriate. That dry, academic therapist didn’t exist. The pack colleague trying to help me; that certainly didn’t exist. He’d used that voice to make me believe he was trying to help me. His voice now was just cold and arrogant; the voice of a man completely in charge of the situation.

  “How do you expect me to believe you’ll do that?”

  “I’ll explain. I’m in the cabin at the top of the mountain behind Coykuti. I have Emily here. Park at the ranch house and walk up. Bring Alex with you. It’ll take you a couple of hours to get up here.”

  “Then what?”

  “At the top, I have the snowmobile I used to get up here. Alex and Emily go down on it. By the time they’re going down, I will have called Petersen. His troops will arrive and come up the track. They’ll have instructions to let the snowmobile past once they get my signal.”

  “Why would we trust you to let them go?”

  “It’s not me you’re trusting. It’s your army colleagues.”

  Trusting Nagas wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  “And then?”

  “I have ten minutes with you before I hand you over to Colonel Petersen. I’m sure you’ve figured out what I want from you by now. If you prevent me from getting it, then Alex will be stopped and killed and Emily brought back up to see if that changes your mind.”

  “Or you just kill them anyway, regardless of what I do.”

  “I can’t kill them. I’ll be at the top of the mountain. You may not trust your former colleagues, but I don’t see that you have any options.”

  “It seems you’re trusting them as well.”

  “I don’t trust them any more than they trust me. I have been careful enough to leave sensitive information about their real command structure in the hands of legal firms who will publish it in the event of my death. I don’t expect them to thank me, but provided I pass you alive to them, they will fly me off this mountain in a helicopter and put me down where I tell them to.”

  He was a fool if he relied on that to keep him alive, but all I wanted was the opportunity to get Emily out. If I could do that, then finding out who was behind Petersen would be good. If I could stay alive.

  But I wasn’t going to deliver Alex and Emily into Petersen’s hands.

  “No deal, Noble. You keep Petersen and his troops away. Alex and Emily get off the mountain first. They call me when they’re clear, then you have your deal. You’ll have as much time as it takes for Petersen to get up to the top. If he’s coming by helicopter that wouldn’t be long.”

  The phone went silent for a long few seconds before he spoke again. “All right.”

  Way too easy. Not that I expected anything else. While I was trying to think how to trap him, all he was thinking of was how to get me onto the mountain. I didn’t trust him to keep any deals any more than I trusted Petersen. He’d already worked through the options and this was just another one he was ready for.

  “No weapons,” he said. “You know I have Adept abilities, and one of them is the working to detect metals. You come up that track carrying metal and the girl dies.”

  Bluff, surely. I wished I had Mary at my side.

  “Okay,” I said. I had no option but to go along at the moment.
>
  “One other thing. Petersen has the same military comms system you do. Don’t assume your encryption is secure. Don’t use it.” He paused. “Now, you know as much as you need to. You have till 3 p.m. to get up here. No excuses. If you’re not here, she dies at one minute past three.” He cut the connection.

  I stood there, the dead phone dangling in my hand.

  Noble was a walking dead man, one way or the other. If I didn’t kill him, the Nagas would. Petersen’s boss in the administration would be too exposed as the FBI investigation went on. The threat he held over them was bullshit. Whoever it was would be on a flight somewhere right now. I had the idea that Petersen’s real bosses were Basilikos anyway.

  What Petersen and his Nagas wanted was me, alive. After Noble. My flesh crawled.

  I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, but provided I got Emily and Alex away, he could take his best shot.

  Chapter 69

  It was beautiful now. The storm had blown through and the sun was out.

  That was a freaking disaster. We’d been counting on the cover of falling snow.

  I emerged from the tree line and started on the final section up to the cabin. The air was cold, but sweet and crisp. It punched right down into my lungs. I’d have been loving it, if I wasn’t walking alone up the mountain behind Coykuti Ranch, with the prospect of handing myself over to a psychopathic rogue on the slim chance of freeing Emily.

  I didn’t know if it was the situation, or whether I’d changed, but Coykuti and the mountain felt different. As if the place was on my side. Part of my territory; though Felix might have something to say about that. It was like Bitter Hooks now; a place I wanted to come. If I could.

  My boots crunched in the snow, following the tracks of Noble’s snowmobile where I could still make them out. I carried a backpack, but no weapons. Mary had been unsure about the self-taught ability of Noble to detect metals, but there was enough to go wrong with our plans without adding to the dangers.

  Complex plans are fragile and vulnerable to many points of failure. Our plan had the benefit, then, of overwhelming simplicity. It wasn’t making me feel better about it as I trudged up the steepening path to the summit, especially now the snow had stopped. But it was all we’d had time for between getting Noble’s call and the deadline he’d imposed.

  I felt the skin-twitching feel of an energy working as I left the trees behind. Possibly that was Noble’s doing and maybe it was some kind of spell to detect if I had metal on me. Or something else entirely. We had little idea of his powers. I shivered.

  In the distance, above and in front of me, the cabin sat at the top of the trail. The trail was the only approach, going up in front of the cabin. There were steep drops on either side, and the back of the mountain had been pretty much chewed off by a glacier.

  Everything around me was covered in at least three feet of fresh snow; more where drifting had piled it up.

  To keep the gradient manageable over the last few hundred yards, the trail started to switchback. Snow piled steep and high on the inside of the track. That had forced Noble’s snowmobile to take the outer edge of the trail, and I walked on the snow it had compacted. As I got higher, so did the drop I walked alongside.

  Alex was somewhere out there, passing from tree shadow to rock like a ghost wolf. We’d counted on him having more cover in the storm, and the first element of our simple plan was already broken.

  I could feel him through our Call, though words and distances didn’t come through. Of course, that meant Noble could tell he was there as well.

  Ursula was on the lower reaches of the mountain. I could sense her faintly.

  Gray was climbing the back of the mountain. I couldn’t sense him. If I couldn’t, did that mean Noble couldn’t either? We were going to find out, one way or another.

  Neither Noble nor Petersen could be trusted. They’d kill Emily and Alex as soon as they had what they wanted. And if Noble thought he’d outfoxed Petersen, he was blinded by his own arrogance. I estimated we might have about half an hour before the Nagas showed up and it all got messy.

  I could see Noble now. The cabin had a flat area in front of it, enough a space to park a couple of snowmobiles. He was standing there on the edge, looking through a telescope at the trail, probably wondering where Alex was.

  He was dressed in the type of shabby overalls that the pack used at their fertilizer factories.

  I wondered what he’d be thinking. He was a careful planner and he would have factored in the danger Alex and I would pose as we got closer.

  It wasn’t according to plan, but Noble not being able to see Alex had to have worried him. Maybe that would lead to a false move on his part. All it would take would be one. On either side.

  Our plan was all in the timing and the delays. While Noble was out front, he couldn’t check what was happening at the back of the mountain. I had to keep him there while Gray got in the back way.

  But Gray couldn’t signal through the Call, and the TacNet was switched off and stored with the weapons I’d hidden below under the cover of the yew trees around Felix’s family cemetery. Even if they couldn’t break our encrypted transmissions, the TacNet would have told the Nagas where we were too early. Leaving it behind bought us precious minutes. Instead, we had flares. Very simple communications; too simple for everything that could happen.

  With every step I took now, our simple plan seemed more difficult. Without the cover of snow, Alex couldn’t sneak in behind me while I diverted Noble. And what if Gray got tired? Took the wrong path up a cliff? What if the Nagas got here too quickly even without tracking our TacNet?

  I was closer and closer to Noble with every step. That was the only thing going right for us at the moment.

  I was three switchbacks and a hundred feet below him when he called out.

  “Who’s going to drive poor Emily back down, Farrell?”

  He didn’t care about that, of course. He just wanted to see if he could work out why we’d decided to play it this way.

  I kept walking, turned the corner. “Alex is here. There’s time. We’ll talk about how we do it,” I said. Eighty feet to go.

  “Brought a change of clothes?” he said. “Why do you think you’ll need that?”

  I eased the backpack straps and kept my head down. Not the change of clothes he’d be expecting, but he wouldn’t be hearing about that from me. Instead I replied: “You said you needed to hand me over alive. Just coming prepared.”

  Sixty feet.

  I wondered what sort of weapon he’d have. His best bet would be a shotgun unless he had a lot of range training. If it was just a handgun, we’d find out exactly how quickly I could close that distance. I had a Kevlar vest on and unless he was good or lucky with a handgun, I’d reach him and then he’d be dead. A rifle would be somewhere in between in terms of danger. I might rush him, depending on how competent he looked and how close he let me get first.

  The time for that decision wasn’t here yet. I walked, concentrating on moving with the least use of energy, keeping him in sight out of the corner of my eyes. I kept my head down—looking as defeated as I dared without overdoing it.

  Forty feet.

  “Stop there,” he said.

  Damn. Not close enough.

  I was just below the last turn. I stopped and looked up tiredly, my shoulders sagging, sweat drying on my face. I slipped the backpack off as if it were uncomfortable. The less I had to carry when it went down the better.

  Where was Gray?

  Noble didn’t have a weapon in his hands.

  Unfortunately, the forty feet left between us was straight up. To get to him, I’d have to run thirty yards along the switchback trail to reach the top and then another thirty yards back to where he was. That would take too much time if he had a weapon down at his feet.

  Stalemate. But that was okay for a while. Every moment we spent talking, Gray was getting closer. I hoped.

  “You know Petersen’s going to double cross you, do
n’t you?” I said.

  “I know he’ll try. Leave the backpack there.”

  I shrugged and started walking again.

  Glancing up, I could just see there was a bag on the ground beside him.

  A CSI type body bag.

  Suddenly, the wolf was scrabbling inside.

  Kill!

  No.

  I clenched my fists, my lungs laboring to get air. I couldn’t lose control now.

  Focus.

  The wolf faded back, but all that flowed in to replace it was a taste of ashes and despair.

  My team was spread out over a mountain that only one of us had ever set foot on before. We had no way to communicate, no way to control the situation. Noble knew the mountain, and all the time we’d been planning, he’d probably been guessing what we’d try. If that was Emily beside him, dead or alive, there was no way either Gray or I could get the drop on him.

  If it wasn’t, who was it? If Emily was back in the cabin, he couldn’t go back in there while I was here. Maybe we had just the sort of stalemate our plan needed.

  Or Emily was dead and he had a shotgun and we were screwed already.

  If, if, if.

  I wouldn’t say I’d been a fool to come here like this.

  When your options shrink until there are no good choices, it’s worse to do nothing.

  Do what you can. None of us can do any more.

  Thanks, Top.

  There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, but climb the last steps of the mountain.

  The wind was cold on one side of my face and the sun hot on the other.

  I couldn’t submit to what Noble had planned. Even if that meant Emily and I died. It might be that this was my day to die. Well, then, a fine day it was for it.

  The feelings washed through me, leaving a sense of lightness and a purity of purpose.

  And a red flare exploded in the sky, fired from down near the ranch.

  Ursula.

  The Nagas were here already.

  Chapter 70

  “Your friends have come to join the party, Noble.”