“Only by reputation,” Kaitlyn admitted. “His apprehension of Boone Fowler is practically legendary around here. I’ve been trying to get an interview with him for years. I’d give anything to know what his reaction is to the prison break. Maybe you could put in a good word for me.”
She regretted the request the moment the words were out of her mouth, especially when she saw the shutters drop over Aidan’s blue eyes. His expression, friendly before, became remote and chilly, and he stood abruptly. “I should get out of here and let you rest.”
“No, don’t go,” Kaitlyn said in a rush. “I’m…sorry. That was extremely rude, considering you just saved my life. I don’t know what came over me.”
“You’re a reporter after a story,” he said coolly. “I understand that. But if you want my advice, you’re wasting your time with Colonel Murphy.”
“Why?”
“Because he has no use for reporters.” Aidan headed for the door.
“Wait!”
He turned, his eyes wary, almost hostile. Kaitlyn’s blood tingled at that look, and the thought occurred to her that Aidan Campbell was not a man she wanted as an enemy.
“What about you?” she asked hesitantly.
“What about me?”
“How do you feel about reporters?”
He gave her a look she couldn’t quite define. “Most of the time they’re a nuisance. Kind of like prickly heat or jungle rot. Not dangerous, just a real pain in the ass to have to deal with.”
Chapter Four
Jacob Powell waited for Aidan at the small airfield on the edge of town where he’d set the chopper down earlier. While Aidan headed off to the hospital, Powell had stayed behind to tinker with the JetRanger’s engine. He was giving the tailboom a visual check as Aidan walked up.
“So how’s the patient?” Powell asked.
“Not too bad, considering. She has a mild concussion, some cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. The doctor says she’ll be fine in a day or two.”
Powell jotted something in the logbook he’d been holding, then closed the cover and tossed the binder into the cockpit. “Well, that’s good news. Were you able to talk to her?”
“Only for a few minutes. She wasn’t able to tell me much. Evidently, she’s suffering from short-term amnesia and doesn’t remember anything before or after the fall.”
“That seems a little convenient.”
Aidan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We’re assuming she fell off the ravine in the dark. Or maybe got caught in a mudslide. What if it didn’t go down that way?”
“What’s your point?” Aidan asked more sharply than he meant to.
Powell slipped on his sunglasses. “Murphy knows someone out at the prison. He was able to get a copy of the visitor’s log, and Kaitlyn Wilson’s name kept coming up. For the past month or so, she’s made weekly trips out to the Fortress, and she always signs in to see Fowler.”
Aidan tried to hide his shock. “You’re sure about this?”
“Positive. I don’t know about you, but the timing of those weekly visits has me a little concerned.”
“You don’t actually think she’s in cahoots with Fowler, do you? Come on, she’s a reporter for the local paper. The five-year anniversary of the bombing is coming up. Makes sense that she’d try to talk to Fowler.”
“On five separate occasions? And answer me this, Campbell. What the hell was she doing up on that mountain in the middle of a storm? That’s rugged terrain under the best of conditions.”
Aidan shrugged. “She says she was on her way to the prison to cover the warden’s press conference when she got caught in the flash flood.”
“Yeah, but we found her miles from the road,” Powell reminded him. “What made her wander so far off the beaten track? And now she has amnesia? I don’t know. Something about her story doesn’t smell right to me.”
“Careful,” Aidan warned. “Your suspicious mind is working overtime.”
“Damn right I’m suspicious. You and I both know that Fowler and his men had help breaking out of the Fortress, and now someone’s obviously aiding and abetting them on the outside. Think about it. They’ve got to be getting supplies from somewhere. Did it ever occur to you that the woman in question could have had an ulterior motive for being up on that mountain?”
The accusation annoyed Aidan, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. “What the hell kind of supplies could she deliver on foot in a downpour?”
“The information kind.” Powell climbed into the chopper and waited until Aidan was buckled in beside him. “Look, I know it’s a long shot, but I’m just saying I don’t think we should necessarily take her at face value, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’m down with that,” Aidan said grudgingly. “But what is it you’re suggesting we do?”
“Keep an eye on her, for starters. See if she makes any more wilderness excursions. And maybe we ought to go back and take a look around the area where we found her. Any objections?”
“Why would I object?”
“You seem to have formed an attachment to this woman. I guess you’ve got that victim-savior thing going on.”
Aidan gave him an irritated look. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
“Come on, Campbell. Admit it. It’s a pattern with you. You always fall in love with the women you rescue. Or is it that they fall in love with you and you just don’t know how to say no?”
“You’re full of it, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.” Powell adjusted his headset, then started the engine. Over the whop-whop of the blades, he yelled into the mouthpiece, “So how’d she clean up?”
Aidan pretended not to hear him as he fiddled with his own headset. “What?”
“The woman. How does she look with all that mud cleaned off her face?”
“She looks…fine.” Damn fine.
Powell grinned, but he said nothing else.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER they were on the pad at Big Sky Bounty Hunters headquarters, a remote outpost in the middle of the Montana wilderness. Built in the log-cabin style, the rustic building housed one of the most efficient and high-tech companies of its kind in the country.
Outfitted with the latest GPS tracking-and-surveil lance equipment, the bounty hunters employed by Cameron Murphy could effectively pursue fugitives anywhere in the world. And with the JetRanger III, a fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles, ATVs and snowmobiles, the rugged terrain they often found themselves in posed few problems.
In the five years since Cameron Murphy had resigned his commission in the service and founded the company, Big Sky had become a phenomenal success. Recruiting heavily from the ranks of the men he’d once commanded provided him with the kind of loyalty and skilled operatives no ordinary firm could hope to match. And his distinguished military service had allowed him to maintain close links with law-enforcement bodies nationwide, including the FBI, which often gave his organization another leg up on the competition.
Aidan was the latest recruit, having left the service a year ago following a SAR mission gone bad. The former commandoes who’d preceded him to Montana— Jacob Powell, Trevor Blackhaw, Bryce Martin, and the others—had welcomed him back into the fold, but none of them, with the exception of Murphy, knew the details of Aidan’s resignation. He intended to keep it that way.
Some of the men were sitting around the conference table in the war room when he walked in, and while they waited for Powell to finish his postflight check on the JetRanger, Aidan briefed them on the rescue operation the day before.
When he finished, Murphy got up to pour himself some coffee. By this time, Powell had joined them, and he grabbed a cup of coffee, too, before taking his place at the conference table.
“You don’t seriously think this woman is helping the fugitives,” Murphy said doubtfully as he came back over to the table.
Powell took a sip of his coffee. “She may not be guilty of anything except bad judgment,
but let’s at least play devil’s advocate here. I’ve got a gut feeling there’s more to her story than she’s telling—whether she remembers it or not. You saw the visitor’s log. We know for a fact that she went out to the prison to talk to Fowler on at least five separate occasions. That alone is suspicious.”
“We don’t know yet whether he actually agreed to see her or not,” Murphy pointed out. “I’m still working on that.”
“Even if she did, she’s not the first reporter to trek out to the Fortress to see Fowler,” Aidan said.
Powell shot him a look. “Yeah, but combine it with this latest business, and something stinks to high heaven. If she got caught in the flood, why not get to safety and just wait it out? Why take off up the mountain, alone, unarmed, in bad weather with night coming? Wouldn’t she assume that someone would come looking for her?”
“She said she was trying to get a cell-phone signal,” Aidan reminded him. “And barring that, she hoped to make it to Eagle Falls before nightfall.”
“I can buy that,” Riley Watson drawled from the end of the table. In his more unguarded moments, like now, Watson was prone to letting his Texas roots show, but he could just as easily disguise his accent when he wanted or needed to. “There’s a long stretch on Route 9 between Ponderosa and the prison that’s a dead zone. Could be that’s where she ran into trouble.”
Powell shrugged. “Okay. But walking ten, fifteen minutes in either direction to try and get a signal…that’s one thing. When we found her, she was miles from the road and nowhere near Eagle Falls. And now she conveniently says she doesn’t remember what happened.”
Murphy’s dark gaze moved to Aidan. “What do you think, Campbell?”
In all honestly, Aidan didn’t quite know what to think. He would have sworn Kaitlyn was telling the truth when he’d first walked into her hospital room earlier, but she’d tipped her hand with her comment about interviewing Murphy.
And now to find out that she’d been out to the prison to see Fowler…
Aidan had crossed paths with ambitious reporters before, and he knew only too well how far some of the more ruthless ones were willing to go to get a story. It wasn’t inconceivable—although unlikely—that a jour nalist with more guts than common sense could have tried to make a deal with Fowler.
“I think an involvement with Fowler is pretty remote,” he said slowly. “I’m inclined to believe her story, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check her out.”
Murphy nodded. “We can run a background check on her, but I don’t think it’ll turn up anything. For what it’s worth, I know the woman slightly. Her father is something of an icon in media circles. He’s won every award the industry has to offer and then some. He interviewed me once, and I found him to be fair, for the most part. However, he’s also something of an arrogant, self-important tool. I imagine he’d be a pretty hard act to follow.”
Aidan folded his arms as he leaned against the window frame. “What do you mean?”
“A daughter who thinks she has something to prove might do something stupid if she thought she could get a major story out of it. Since you’ve already got an in with her, Campbell, I’d like you to do the follow-up. Let’s not tip our hand to her yet. Just go talk to her again and see if what she has to say sets off any alarm bells.”
“Do you want me to put her under surveillance?” Aidan asked.
Murphy considered the question for a moment. “I’ll leave that up to you. I agree her involvement is pretty unlikely, but at this point, we can’t afford to overlook any possibility. We know Fowler’s getting help from somewhere. Which brings me to Craig Green’s press conference.”
Setting aside his coffee, Murphy got up from the table. “Most of you have already been briefed, but for those of you who were still out in the field when Clark and I got back from the prison, I want to bring you up to speed on the main points Green covered.”
As he began to pace, he counted off the points on one hand. “One…at approximately 2200 hours on Monday night, a commotion breaks out on Cell Block C where inmates serving life sentences are housed. Fowler and his cohorts begin hurling racial and anti-American slurs at some of the other prisoners. A fight breaks out and quickly escalates into a brawl. Then a full-fledged riot ensues.
“Two…the facility goes into a complete lockdown. Fowler and his gang are subdued and led off to solitary confinement while the guards try to restore order to the cell block.
“Three…a guard goes to check on Fowler and the others the following morning and finds their cells empty. Somehow the prisoners managed to escape during the riot, but no one knows how or who helped them. And no one’s talking, either. Not the inmates or the guards.”
“It had to be an inside job,” Michael Clark ventured. Experienced in strategic intelligence collection, the man’s ability to read body language and speech patterns bordered on the uncanny. “I normally operate under the theory that you can learn more from a subject by what he doesn’t say than from his actual words. In Craig Green’s case, though, his statement was pretty damn revealing. He announced that he’ll be leaving his post within the next six months, and I find his timing curious, to say the least.”
“Did he give a reason?” someone asked.
“Age, poor health, pressures of the job, wanting to spend more time with his family…” Clark trailed off with a shrug.
“Sounds like the usual BS a man shovels to the public when he’s being forced out,” Bryce Martin observed quietly. Introverted and brooding, the man rarely spoke during these meetings, but when he did, the other bounty hunters were inclined to listen.
“That’s the way it sounds to me, too, but my sources indicate otherwise,” Murphy said. “Frankly, I’m surprised the man wasn’t fired a long time ago. He’s been dogged by rumors of corruption for years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a nice, fat offshore bank account somewhere. My guess is he’ll wait until the dust settles around the prison break, and then he’ll flee the country before the feds can pin anything on him.” He cleared his throat. “Which is why I want to take a closer look at him. Like Clark said, the prison break was obviously an inside job, and Green’s the strongest sus pect we have so far. But at the same time, we’ll have to be careful not to step on any toes.”
“Yeah, the feds do have a tendency to get a little territorial, don’t they?” Trevor Blackhaw said with a grin. Despite his tame demeanor, this half Cherokee former commando was legendary in Big Sky Country for his fierce interrogation tactics known to break even the most iron-willed men.
“I’ve spoken to my FBI contact and informed him of our intensions,” Murphy said. “So far, the Bureau hasn’t thrown up any barriers, but he did let something slip. And gentlemen…” He placed his hands flat on the table and leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “This is where things get interesting.”
Aidan’s blood quickened at the look on Murphy’s face. It was obvious something was up. Something big.
“It seems an army of special agents swarmed into Montana before the prison break.”
“They must have gotten wind of it somehow,” Watson speculated. “Someone talked.”
“It’s possible.” Murphy straightened from the table and continued to pace. “But I’m inclined to think the deluge of federal agents into the state has something to do with Nikolai Petrov’s visit.”
That made sense to Aidan. Petrov’s whirlwind tour of the country had been all over the news for weeks. Ever since his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, he had been elevated to near godlike sta tus by an adoring press and legions of enamored fans. But Petrov was more than just a pretty face. Openly defying his father before the world in order to call attention to the plight of his people had taken guts.
Aidan had spent some time in Lukinburg, and he knew just how oppressive and ruthless the current regime had become in recent years. Once a satellite of the USSR, the tiny country had gained its independence during the 1990s, and the government had reverted back to the mon
archy that existed prior to Soviet domination.
On his ascension to the throne, King Aleksandr had been heralded by his people as a heroic freedom fighter who had never lost touch with his people. But a tricky road lay ahead for the ruler and his fledgling nation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lukinburg found itself in desperate financial straits, and under Aleksandr’s leadership, tight governmental regulations were instituted to allow the stagnant economy to rebound.
But in spite of the country’s burgeoning prosperity, Aleksandr sought more and more control over the private sector until he became, in the end, what he had always despised…a greedy, arrogant despot with seemingly little compassion for his own people.
The already dangerous situation in Lukinburg had worsened in recent months when rumors began to filter out that Aleksandr had used chemical weapons against a rebel faction and that he was now quietly in the market for purified uranium.
Once those rumors were confirmed at the now-famous United Nations showdown between father and son, the world body could no longer ignore the oppression of the Lukinburg people. Sensing a weakening in the Security Council’s former rigid stance against military intervention, Nikolai had used his instant celebrity to take his case directly to the public.
And if current polls were any indication, his PR blitz was a resounding success. A fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by Aleksandr, who had recently declared his son an enemy of the state.
All this went through Aidan’s head in the blink of an eye as he considered everything that Murphy had told them.
He glanced at his former commander. “An assassination attempt,” he said. “That could be why the feds are pouring into the state.”
Murphy nodded. “Exactly my thought. An attempt on Nikolai Petrov’s life on American soil could set off an international incident with catastrophic consequences. Which means Boone Fowler won’t exactly be at the top of the feds’ priority list. That’s where we come in.”
There was something in Murphy’s eyes…a look that Aidan hadn’t seen since their last clandestine mission together. It made his own adrenaline spike as he watched Murphy’s face settle into a grim mask of resolve and anticipation.
Going to Extremes Page 5
