by Paula Graves
“Sometimes that was the point of the IEDs,” he said softly. “To make the troops vulnerable to attack. Blow up the vehicle and prey on the survivors.”
Susannah’s gut roiled. “Did they—”
“Prey on me?” His mouth twisted in a grotesque parody of a smile. “No, not me. I was lucky. The blast sent me flying into a small ravine. They didn’t know I was there, so they didn’t—”
Her fingers flexed, tightening on his.
He turned to look at her again, his gaze holding this time. “This isn’t something anyone needs to hear.”
“But maybe it’s something you need to say.”
His gaze held hers a moment longer, then he closed his eyes and leaned toward her until his forehead rested against hers. “I could hear them attacking—” He swallowed hard, his breath releasing in a soft, guttural growl as he pulled away from her. “I could hear them brutalizing the handful of survivors. I could hear it, but I couldn’t drag myself up that ravine to lay down any cover fire for them. I’ve gone over it and over it a million times since that day—if I’d tried a little harder, could I have made it up that rock wall? My leg was a mess, yes, but only one leg. Not the rest of me. Why couldn’t I make it up that wall?”
“Stop,” she said, fighting a surge of anger as she reached up and cradled his face between her palms, making him look at her. “You nearly lost your leg. You were probably losing blood by the buckets, right? You think you could have saved anyone even if you’d gotten up that wall?”
“I don’t know.” He lifted his hands, covering hers, pulling her hands away from his face. But he didn’t let them go. “I don’t know. I just know I wasn’t any kind of war hero for being the sole survivor.”
She didn’t agree. She thought he was a hero just for putting his life on the line there in the first place. But that wasn’t what he needed to hear, so she swallowed her protest and simply squeezed his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it happened to you and your team. I’m sorry they didn’t survive.”
“Me, too.” He released her hands and picked up the folder she’d brought with them. “There’s got to be something in here that tells us what they’re up to. Some vulnerability we’re missing.”
“I don’t think it’s a bomb.” She forced her voice past the lump in her throat. “I’ve looked over and over these floor plans, and I don’t see how they could plant a bomb close enough to the conference rooms that would do the damage they’re looking to inflict, do you? The best bet would be to pack a large truck or something similar with ANFO or another kind of explosive and set it off with a timer, but there’s nowhere to park anything at all on the side of the hotel where the conference is taking place. Those rooms were built specifically for the view of the mountains out the picture windows, and they overlook a bluff. There’s no parking area on that side of the building. And unless they were able to set explosives that would bring the whole structure down, like a controlled demolition—”
“We’ve already looked around for something like that. It’s just not here,” he said.
“So how else would you try to do damage at a conference if you couldn’t blow it up?”
“Radiation poisoning,” he suggested.
“God forbid.”
“I think we can rule out any sort of armed ambush,” he said thoughtfully. He still looked haunted, but some of the tension in his shoulders and neck eased as he applied his mind to their current problem, leaving the past behind. “Assuming the hotel is allowing all those cops to carry weapons. Are they?”
“There was some debate on the topic,” she admitted, “but I convinced the naysayers that you can’t expect a bunch of cops to agree to hand over their weapons just because they’re at a conference.”
“So, no armed siege. No bomb. Probably not a suitcase nuke.”
She shuddered at the thought. “Unless someone worked down at Oak Ridge and could get their hands on—”
“Not going to happen. Suitcase nukes are more fiction than fact, and if anyone ever successfully pulled it off, the fissile materials would almost certainly come from somewhere overseas.” His brow furrowed. “I wonder, though...”
“You wonder?” she prodded when he didn’t say anything more.
“I was thinking about the rash of polonium poisonings in Europe a while back. Remember those?”
“Vaguely. Didn’t everybody think that the current incarnation of what used to be the KGB did it? Eliminating enemies of the state or something?”
“Or something,” he agreed. “And polonium wouldn’t be easy to get your hands on, especially for the BRI. But poisoning a food source isn’t that hard if you have access to the catering kitchen. All kinds of ways to do it, I’d think. Who’s catering the deal?”
“Ballard’s,” she answered. “It’s a large catering outfit in Maryville.” Her stomach dropped. “Oh, my God. Of course.”
“What?”
“Marcus is the one who hired them. He’d been handling the whole thing until about three weeks ago, when I found out he was dating one of the chefs. I couldn’t exactly change caterers so close to the event, but I did relieve him of his liaison duties and took them over myself. I didn’t want there to be any whiff of a conflict of interest.”
“Three weeks ago is when Billy Dawson called me and the others in to discuss ways to get you out of the way.” He reached across the space between them and brushed her hair away from her temple, letting his fingertips linger on her cheek. “They’re going to poison the conference luncheon.”
Chapter Fourteen
“The caterer is bringing their own cooking pans and utensils, but they’ll be using the conference-hall kitchen.” Susannah was pacing the small break room in agitated strides, circling the table where Hunter sat as she spoke. “The conference dining hall is on the second floor.”
“I know.”
“The kitchen is just off the main hall,” she added as if he hadn’t spoken. Her gaze was angled forward, but he knew she wasn’t really seeing the drab break-room walls, with the out-of-date wall calendar displaying Miss August in tight jeans and a crop top, wrench in one hand and toolbox in the other. Instead, he knew, she was picturing the second-floor layout, from the large banquet hall in the center to the compact kitchen in the next suite over.
“Do they police access to the kitchens?”
She looked at him that time, her gaze shifting into focus. “Not really. Not unless we’re asked to.”
“Did the top cops ask you to?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He reached out and caught her hand as she wandered past, pulling her off course. She almost stumbled into his lap before catching herself with one hand on his shoulder.
Her gaze darkened as he dropped his other hand to the curve of her hip, holding her in place. “Do you know anything about poisons?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that didn’t come from true-crime TV.”
“I don’t know much, myself,” he admitted, leaving his hand in place. He liked the soft heat of her body beneath his fingers, liked the way the sensation spread up his arm and into his chest like a river of warmth. “My expertise tends to be chemical weapons, thanks to my training.”
“I don’t think it can be anything fast-acting,” she said thoughtfully. She seemed to be leaning into his touch, so he let go of her wrist and laid his hand on her other hip, gently drawing her closer. She took a couple of steps forward, settling between his knees. She wrapped one hand around the back of his neck, her other hand toying with the collar of his shirt. “If it was fast, someone would figure it out before everyone was affected. So what poisons would that eliminate? Cyanide?”
“Cyanide’s definitely fast-acting.” He leaned toward her, drawn by the heat of her body. So tempting and comforting at the same time. “What’s the menu?”
“The usual. Mixed-green salad. Baked chicken and asparagus in a cream sauce for meat-eaters, and grilled portabello mushrooms with wild rice and asparagus in a basil sauce for veget
arians.”
“Poisonous mushrooms?”
“I don’t know. The caterers are supplying all the main ingredients. I’m wondering if it’s something that has to be added here rather than at the caterer’s. Since Marcus is here so late. Maybe he’s switching out something the caterers brought early, like condiments or something that doesn’t have to be brought here fresh?”
“Maybe herbs or spices?”
“Oh, my God,” she said, remembering the leaves they’d seen in Marcus’s desk drawer. “What if those weren’t tea leaves in his desk?”
“I think we’d better figure out a way into that kitchen.”
* * *
“SHE’S SOMEWHERE INSIDE that hotel.” Kenny Bradbury’s voice had risen a half octave since Asa’s arrival, his dark brown eyes glowing with a chaotic mix of excitement and anxiety.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“We had a rifle scope camera on the office windows, like you suggested. How’d you know she’d go back there?”
Because that was the kind of girl Susan McKenzie had always been, even at sixteen. A tough little hillbilly girl who never gave up on a fight.
He knew that the Blue Ridge Infantry was up to something at the hotel. He wasn’t a member himself, but in his business, it was impossible to avoid rubbing elbows with people who were part of that ridiculous mock army. Not the sort of people he could trust with his business, of course, but they were sometimes useful as informants or, occasionally, cannon fodder.
“Did you get a shot of her?” Asa asked Kenny.
Kenny pulled out the rifle scope camera and showed him the image on the display. The lighting wasn’t great—she and the man with her were using small, low-power flashlights, and the narrow beams barely provided enough light to make out their features.
But the shape of the face was right. The slight upward curve of her nose. Those full lips that Clinton had been downright obsessed with, obsessed enough to risk everything to have her, even though she didn’t want any part of him.
Stupid fool.
“It’s definitely her, right?” Kenny asked, his earlier confidence beginning to flag in the wake of Asa’s continued silence.
He sighed and let his cousin off the hook. “It’s her. You have the exits covered so she can’t get away?”
“Every one of them.”
Asa made a note to confirm that fact for himself. It had been years since he’d been anywhere near this close to finding little Susan McKenzie and bringing her to justice.
It was way past time to get the whole mess over with.
* * *
“THERE’S A DUMBWAITER,” Susannah said suddenly, tapping her fingers on the piece of paper in front of her with a jolt of excitement.
Hunter leaned toward her to look at the paper, his hard-muscled shoulder pressed to hers, distracting tingles racing along her flesh where they touched. “Where?”
“In the conference-room kitchen.” She pointed to the notation on a copy of the security department’s correspondence with the caterer. “The caterer asked if we had parking-level access to the conference-room kitchen by way of a dumbwaiter, and security says yes.”
“It’s not on the floor plans.”
“Maybe it was added after the plans were drawn.” She reached for the hotel floor plans, locating the conference-room kitchen. “Okay, the kitchen is about twenty yards east of the central elevators.” She rose and walked to the break-room door, edged her head out the door and looked toward the elevators. “All clear. Shall we go hunting?”
Hunter stayed close as they crossed to the central bank of elevators and looked east. About twenty yards down the narrow hallway was a door located close to the exit that led to the parking garage. “That must be it,” he said. “It’s the room where the main breaker and fuse boxes are. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually been in there.”
“Me, either.” They tried the door, found it locked. Hunter pulled out the keys he’d grabbed from the maintenance office and unlocked the door.
The room was larger than he’d expected, covered nearly wall to wall with a variety of electrical boxes and numerous switches and levers. “Careful,” he warned as she moved past him into the room, toward the only place the dumbwaiter could possibly be located: a narrow door in the wall between the main breaker and a small gray fuse box.
“Please be unlocked,” she murmured as she twisted the doorknob.
The door opened with ease, revealing what looked like a small closet with a square metal cage filling most of the upper half of the space. A sturdy cable hung on a pulley to one side of the dumbwaiter.
“Bingo,” Susannah murmured, flashing him a grin.
“It’s too small for me,” he said, his voice dark with frustration.
“But not for me.”
His gaze clashed with hers. “No, Susannah.”
“Yes, Hunter.”
“We came here together, and I plan for us to leave together. And the only way to ensure that is if we stay together.”
“We need to get into the kitchen. There are only two ways for that to happen—either I take that elevator up to the second floor and risk being seen in the hallway, or I sneak into the kitchen in this dumbwaiter. I know which option I’d rather choose.”
“What if you get up there and Marcus Lemonde is waiting on the other side?”
“I’m armed.”
“He may be, too.”
“I’m not afraid of Marcus.” She’d faced down much tougher enemies. “Look, I know you’re only trying to protect me. But I’m not helpless. When I was sixteen, I killed a man trying to rape me. And then I left home a few weeks later after that man’s family tried to kill me in retaliation. I’ve lived isolated from everything and everyone who ever meant a damn thing to me because that’s the only way I knew to survive. Now, I have a chance to stop an attack on a group of people who are out there, day in and day out, trying to keep people like you and me safe from harm.”
“Susannah—”
“Susan,” she snapped. “My name is Susan. Susan Elizabeth McKenzie. I’ll probably never get to use it again, but I just want one person to know who I really am.”
Hunter touched her cheek, his thumb sliding over her trembling bottom lip. “Nice to meet you, Susan Elizabeth McKenzie.”
“One of the people who’ll be eating at that conference luncheon is my cousin, whose family took me in when I had literally nowhere else to turn.” She pulled away from his grasp, afraid she couldn’t stay strong while he was touching her. “I have to find out what the BRI has planned for the conference. And I have to put a stop to it.”
Tension crackled between them in the thick silence. Then Hunter gave a short, barely-there nod and looked away from her.
“What are the odds that this thing doesn’t creak like a rusty hinge?” Wincing in anticipation, she climbed into the steel cage. There was a faint rasp of metal on metal, but the dumbwaiter seemed sturdy enough.
“You don’t have to do this.” Hunter’s voice was a growly whisper. He didn’t meet her eyes, his gaze focused on the rope-and-pulley system designed to move the dumbwaiter up and down the chute between floors. “We can figure out another option.”
“We could be running out of time,” she replied, reaching across the space between them to curl her fingers over his arm.
He looked at her then, his green eyes blazing a maelstrom of emotions her way. Anger was there. Fear. And something else, something that rang through her like a newly struck bell, true and resonant.
“When you reach the top, tug three times on the rope to let me know you’re there and you’re okay. And be careful. Don’t take chances you don’t have to.” He bent in a rush, slanting his mouth over hers in a fierce kiss. His lips softened within a second, caressing hers with such tenderness she felt her heart contract.
He pulled away as quickly as he’d moved toward her, reaching for the rope. He gave a tug, the pulley turned and the dumbwaiter began to rise.
She hadn’t
counted on the darkness. Once she was inside the chute, the dumbwaiter blocked out almost all light from above or below, plunging her into a lurching void of darkness and jerky motion. Steeling herself against a rush of panic, she concentrated on breathing in slow, steady rhythm with the pulse in her ears. One breath for every four heartbeats. In and out.
With a jarring clunk, the dumbwaiter jolted to a stop. Playing her penlight on the surface in front of her, she saw she had reached another door.
She tugged three times on the rope, knowing Hunter would be able to feel the vibrations on his end. Then, holding her breath and lifting a quick, fervent prayer, she opened the door.
Beyond was more darkness.
* * *
SOLDIERS WERE NO bloody good at waiting. They were men and women of action. The point of the spear. Hunter felt useless standing there holding a dumbwaiter rope and waiting for someone else to take all the risks.
When his cell phone vibrated against his chest, it felt as jolting as a bolt of electricity. He shoved his hand into the jacket’s inside chest pocket and withdrew his phone. An unfamiliar number on the display threw him for a second, until he remembered Quinn had a new burner phone.
He answered with the “all clear” code phrase Quinn had given him at the cabin before he left. “Baker Electric twenty-four-hour hotline.”
“My garbage disposal has a short,” Quinn answered.
Hunter relaxed marginally at the sound of the “situation normal” response code.
“Anything new?” Quinn asked after a brief pause.
“We have an idea how the BRI plans to target the conference.” Hunter told Quinn about Marcus Lemonde’s connection to the catering company and their theory about how he planned to sabotage the luncheon. “Depending on what kind of poison they go with, the results could range from mild sickness to mass murder.”
“You’ve been inside the BRI for three months,” Quinn said. “What’s your gut feeling? How far are they willing to go?”
“At one point, I thought they might be blowing this place up,” he answered grimly. “I don’t think they’d balk at mass murder.”
