by Amelia Autin
"I still don't want your thanks."
"Why not?"
"Because…" Walker hunched one shoulder, as if something wasn't setting quite right with him. "I just don't, that's all."
* * *
Mandy downshifted into a turn, not even wincing at the slight grinding sound from the changing gears. She couldn't worry about that now. If she didn't get there in time to save Reilly, it wouldn't matter if she burned out the clutch and stripped every gear in the transmission.
She pressed down on the accelerator. Her legs were shorter than Reilly's, but she hadn't wasted time adjusting the seat before starting out, so she had to stretch to reach the pedal. The well-tuned engine responded, and the truck shot forward with a burst of speed.
She was going too fast on this winding mountain road. She knew that. Deep down inside, some part of her subconscious remembered the accident that had claimed her baby's life, and she was terrified. But she couldn't worry about that now, either. Reilly and Cody had a good forty-minute headstart on her. If Reilly was going to have any chance at all, she had to get to him as quickly as possible.
An S-curve warning sign loomed ahead, but she barely slowed, trusting heaven to watch out for her. The truck leaned precariously close to the edge and she held her breath for heart-stopping seconds, but it righted itself just in time for her to spin the wheel in the other direction. On the straightaway once more, she breathed again. Until that moment she hadn't realized she'd been praying all along. A wordless, voiceless prayer, but a prayer nevertheless.
God doesn't give us any more heartache than we can bear, Mandy remembered her mother saying more than once, when she was a little girl. She hadn't really understood. Heartache back then had been a fight with one of her friends or the loss of a cherished pet. She hadn't known that your whole world could turn dark, that despair could rob you of your will to live.
Her mother had been right, though. As a teenager, Mandy had mourned the deaths of her grandparents, one by one, and though she'd loved them and sorely missed them, their loss had been bearable. She'd grieved longer for her parents when their time came, but her grief had been tempered with the knowledge that they had gone together into eternity, as they would have wanted.
Even losing Reilly and the baby a year ago, losses she hadn't believed she could survive, had somehow been borne. Her faith had been deeply shaken, but not destroyed. Now that faith was the only thing holding her together.
God wouldn't have brought Reilly back to me if He was just going to take him again, she reassured herself. She rounded another curve, this time without slowing at all. He wouldn't give me hope, then smash it. He knows I couldn't bear it this time.
"I'm not asking for a miracle, God," she whispered, not even aware that she had spoken aloud. "Just don't let me be too late."
* * *
David Pennington slammed the battered tailgate shut. "Perfect," he said, allowing himself a tiny smile of satisfaction. "Just perfect."
Carl Walsh stood to one side. Like his superior, he wore the "uniform" of the New World Militia in the field: camouflage khakis. Unlike his superior, however, he wore a troubled expression on his face instead of a smile. "I don't like it, David. What if something goes wrong? How will you stop it?"
Pennington meticulously peeled off the latex gloves he wore and rolled them inside out, tucking them into his back pocket. "You worry too much, Carl. Nothing's going to go wrong this time. That's why I'm here. To make sure."
Walsh shook his head. "I still don't like it. Callahan's too smart, and he's been on the run for a long time. A lot of men turn feral that way. It doesn't make sense he hasn't sniffed out this trap."
"Yes, Callahan's smart," Pennington said, "and yes, he's survived on the run for a long time. But sometimes that backfires. With that combination, sometimes a man starts thinking he's invincible. He gets careless. Makes mistakes."
"Like you did with Callahan?" Walsh hadn't meant to ask, but the question had just slipped out.
Pennington's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils flared, but he conceded coolly, "Yes, Carl. Like I did with Callahan." Only the muscle twitching in his clenched jaw betrayed his closely held anger. Then he smiled, but his eyes remained deadly cold. "And like Callahan has done with Centurion."
* * *
Reilly checked his watch again, then tamped down his impatience. It was always a mistake to let yourself worry about what couldn't be controlled, he reminded himself. He wanted this confrontation over with, wanted things settled one way or another, but watching the seconds tick by wouldn't make it happen any sooner.
He looked up when Walker flicked on the turn indicator and slowed for an upcoming exit.
He frowned. "This isn't the way to the reservoir." It wasn't a question exactly, but it demanded an answer.
"It's the old road around the mountain," Walker explained. "I told you about it, remember? It's the one Mandy—"
"I remember." Reilly didn't want to be reminded of Mandy's accident, but it was already too late. A nightmare image flashed before his mind's eye, one that wasn't a memory but was burned into his mind as if it were: Mandy lying pinned in the wreckage of her car for helpless hours as her life and their baby's life seeped away.
Pain made his voice harsh. "Why are we going this way?"
"It's shorter, and will get us there from the other side. I can almost guarantee Pennington will come by the main road, which means he has to go through town before he reaches us."
Suddenly Reilly knew that he couldn't ride on the road that had nearly been Mandy's death. Not tonight. He couldn't pass the numerous ravines and valleys that almost certainly lined the winding mountain road, without imagining her trapped and bleeding at the bottom of each one. And if he did that, by the time he reached the reservoir he'd be easy prey for Pennington.
"We have time," he said, shielding his unexpected weakness with a brusque tone. "Let's take the main road."
Walker turned speculative eyes on him, then shrugged. "Okay by me."
* * *
Mandy accelerated onto I-90, narrowly avoiding a collision with a cattle truck, whose driver blared his horn at her but refused to move to the left lane. She gripped the steering wheel, gunned the engine and passed him on the right shoulder, easily outdistancing the other vehicle.
She heaved a sigh of relief as she sped down the interstate, not because of her near miss but because the road's surface was made for speed. Reilly's truck had power to spare, but the shock absorbers weren't built to take the punishment she'd subjected them to coming down the mountain.
She pressed the accelerator to the floor and glanced at the speedometer once, then didn't bother again. If a state trooper caught her on his radar, he'd just have to chase her all the way to the site, because she wasn't stopping for anything.
As the reflecting mile markers whizzed by, she wondered how far she was behind Reilly and Cody. She had no way of knowing. Maybe she was already too—
"No!" she said fiercely, clinging to hope along with the steering wheel.
Her gaze slid to the gun, half-tucked beneath her right thigh to keep it from sliding off the seat, then back to the road. She didn't want to think about that, either, but it was better than the alternative.
There was a chance she was wrong about Cody. How much of one she didn't know, but still a chance. She wanted to be wrong. Prayed to be wrong. But if she wasn't…
She strained her eyes to see what lay ahead. The headlights didn't make much of a dent in the darkness, and at this speed she could easily hit some animal before she even saw it. A thought popped into her head and she made a sound of self-disgust, then clicked on the bright lights. Should have thought of that sooner, she reproached herself, but knew she was doing the best she could under the circumstances.
A few minutes later she spotted the sign for the old mountain road turnoff. Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat as she remembered the last time she'd driven that road. Then she pressed determined lips together and swung
the wheel toward the exit.
* * *
Chapter 16
« ^ »
Reilly and Walker circled around and came in from the north on foot, skirting the reservoir's retaining wall and keeping to the cover of the trees for as long as they could while they worked their way toward the lights on the south end.
The rhythmic chugs of the turbine-powered water pumps resonated like a mighty heartbeat in the otherwise still night, and sent ripples skimming over the inky surface of the water. Pale moonlight glimmered off the ripples, turning the reservoir into an obsidian lake. But neither man spared a glance for its eerie beauty.
An eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire and arc lights surrounded the pumping station. Reilly stood guard with gun drawn, his eyes alert for any sign of movement in the well-lit enclosure or the darkness around it, while Walker snipped a hole in the fence just large enough for a man to crawl through. Once they were on the other side, Walker bent the edges of the chain-link fence back into place, so that only a close inspection would reveal it had been cut at all. Then the two men quickly headed for the concealing shadows behind the station.
* * *
Mandy wrenched the wheel to the left and stomped on the brakes with both feet. The truck swerved across the yellow dividing line and skidded to a halt on the far shoulder, kicking up a small cloud of dust and gravel in the process.
That was close, she thought, hitting the switch to kill the headlights. And stupid. What was I thinking of?
She hadn't been thinking at all, that was the problem. Otherwise she would have realized before now that she couldn't just drive all the way down to the reservoir. Not if she wanted to save Reilly.
At least she'd had the presence of mind to pull off the road on the sheltered side and turn the headlights off the minute she realized they could be spotted by anyone at the reservoir. They weren't the only lights on the mountain by any means—house and yard lights dotted the darkness—but they were the only ones moving, and could have been a dead giveaway.
Cody knows as well as I do how little traffic there is on this old road, especially at night. If he's in collusion with Pennington and the militia to set Reilly up, he'll be doubly suspicious of anything out of the ordinary right now. I know I would be.
She needed a plan, and not just to get down the mountain undetected. She also needed a way to get close to the pumping station without being seen. And if she managed to accomplish that, she still had to find a way to warn Reilly without getting him, or herself, killed.
The first step was easy, if she had the guts. Driving at night without headlights wasn't impossible, just extremely dangerous. Driving down a mountain at the same time, as fast as you dared, along a narrow, winding road that had already claimed you as a victim once before, well … it wasn't something you ought to try unless you were desperate.
Fear sent shivers through her body, but Mandy's hands were steady as she turned on the engine, shifted into gear, and pulled back onto the road. As the truck crawled blindly through the darkness, all she could think of was that if she was wrong about Cody she was taking a crazy chance for nothing. But if she was right, then desperate described her situation exactly.
* * *
"Don't forget this," Walker said in an undertone.
Reilly hesitated, then holstered his .45 and reluctantly accepted the electronic transmitter Walker held out to him. He hated wearing a wire, hated the restrictions it put on him. Every time he'd worn one he'd sworn it was the last time. And every time he'd been wrong.
This really is the last time, he vowed as he unbuttoned his shirt with one hand. One way or another.
It made no difference if they nailed Pennington the way Walker envisioned—the legal way, through the court system Reilly had tried once before—or if they had to take him down hard. Reilly was finished as an undercover cop. And if something went wrong tonight, then he would no longer be breaking, or making, vows of any kind.
Vows … marriage … Mandy. The word association was a natural progression that happened so fast he had no control over it, and for a moment a vision of Mandy as he'd last seen her flashed into his mind. Don't think about her, he warned himself as he fought off the memory. Not now. Stay focused.
His head came up sharply when he heard the plaintive cry of a night bird close by, and he saw Walker tilt his head to listen. His eyes caught Walker's for a moment, then he looked down again. Uncharacteristically clumsy, he fumbled with the transmitter, and muttered, "Give me a hand with this, will you?"
"I'm afraid I can't do that," Walker said softly, and Reilly heard the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked. He automatically reached for his .45, but before he could draw, found himself staring down the business end of Walker's service revolver.
Their eyes met again, but this time there was a coldness in Walker's expression that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Reilly shook his head in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing?"
"You won't be needing this," Walker said as he jerked Reilly's gun from its holster and tucked it into his waistband.
Reilly's eyes widened in growing comprehension, then narrowed. "You son of a bitch," he rasped. "You're with them." He dove at Walker without warning, and they both crashed to the ground, rolling over and over, struggling for possession of the sheriff's gun.
The fight lasted only a few seconds. Walker grunted and heaved himself on top, managing to free his gun arm at the same time, and clubbed Reilly across the temple with the butt of the revolver.
The blow dazed Reilly just enough so that by the time his head cleared, Walker had cuffed his arms behind his back and had dragged him, stumbling, to his feet.
"What are you waiting for?" Reilly's words were slurred together, but the meaning was plain. "You brought me here to kill me, didn't you? So just get it over with, damn you!"
"You don't get off that easily, Callahan."
Reilly froze at the chilling sound of that voice, a voice indelibly burned into his memory. Then two men stepped from the shadows behind Walker. One carried an Uzi submachine gun pointed directly at him. The other was David Pennington.
* * *
Mandy cut the engine and let the truck coast the last hundred yards to the foot of the knoll on which the reservoir's pumping station was situated. She'd already taken care of the inside dome light, so she didn't have to worry about betraying her presence that way, and she had grabbed the gun and was halfway out the door before the truck came to a complete stop. She hit the ground running, heading for the spillway.
Back when she'd been an adventurous ten-year-old and the reservoir had just been built, she and Cody had found a way to sneak into the station, circumventing the fence. No one had ever caught them, and it had always been their secret. Unless someone had discovered the design flaw in the security system and corrected it since then, she intended to get in the same way they had twenty-one years ago.
Mandy was short of breath by the time she reached the outlook near the spillway, and she paused for a moment. Her eyes scanned the top of the concrete structure where it abutted the fence surrounding the pumping station, and she exulted inside. Yes! she thought, relief mingling with other emotions when she saw there was still no obstruction blocking access to the enclosure from the top of the spillway.
Thank God they haven't changed it.
Her gaze moved to the steady flow of water pouring through the sieve openings at the top of the spillway and gurgling down its face. Her elation dimmed when she realized that the water level in the reservoir must be unusually high, most likely caused by spring runoff from melting snow on the mountains. That was going to slow her down some, precious minutes she couldn't afford to waste.
She toed off her shoes, then tucked Reilly's gun in her hip pocket and pulled off her socks. Her feet would be cold, and she'd probably end up with some cuts and bruises by the time this was over, but she'd never made this climb in anything other than bare feet. Now wasn't the time
to experiment, not with Reilly's life at stake.
She turned around and began her semicontrolled descent down the steep incline which led to the stream below much faster than she'd ever dared before—slip-sliding here, fingers and toes finding purchase there. When she finally reached the bottom, two fingernails on her right hand and three on her left had been torn off below the quick, and there was a nasty graze across the side of one foot from a painful encounter with a jagged rock. Her palms had been tender before she'd started out, with the blisters from the fire not completely healed. Now they didn't bear thinking about, but at least she was down in one piece.
The stream was bone-chillingly cold when Mandy waded into it, reaching above her knees at the midpoint, but the current wasn't as strong as she'd feared, and she made it across without too much of a struggle. As she splashed out of the water on the other side and picked her way along the stream's rocky bank, she had cause to be grateful for her numbed feet.
The spillway towered above her, seeming much higher from below than it did from above. She grasped the first of the bent iron bars embedded in the cement, which served as a ladder of sorts leading to the top. She took a calming breath, then ascended, hand over hand, making sure her bare feet were securely placed on each rung. In less than a minute she had climbed all the way up.
She walked across to where concrete met barbed wire. She didn't let herself look down, focusing on the far side instead. Once there, she squatted to determine exactly where she would put her hands to avoid the barbs, thankful that any noise she might make would be drowned out by the whine of the generators, then carefully climbed over and down.
She was in. She pulled Reilly's gun out, and crept around the corner of the nearest building.
* * *
"Did you really think I would let you get away with it?" Pennington gloated. "You could run to the ends of the earth, change your face a thousand times, but I would still track you down. You became a dead man the moment you betrayed me. It was only a matter of time."
