by Jenna Kernan
“Where is my dog?”
“They are processing her for evidence.”
“If you hurt one hair...”
The threat was cut short as the athletic woman lifted a thin eyebrow.
“She has bloodstains on her collar. They are taking samples.”
Back in the interrogation room she found only the empty chairs and table. She walked to the one-way mirror and slapped it.
“I want my husband or my phone call now!” Who would she call? The camp director? She snorted and began her pacing again.
Tillman opened the door and motioned to someone in the hallway. In stepped a slim, athletic woman of a similar height to her.
Erin glared at the new arrival.
“Mrs. Stevens, this is DHS agent Rylee Hockings out of Glens Falls.”
“My substitute,” said Erin, standing to face her replacement. “She has blue eyes and she’s blond.”
“Contacts. Hair dye,” said Tillman.
From the sidelong look Agent Hockings cast him, Erin guessed no one had told her about the dye job.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Erin.” Hockings extended her hand. Unlike Erin’s hand, Hockings’s was dirt-free, her nails trimmed into uniformed ovals and coated with a pale pink polish. She was clean and smelled wonderful.
“Look at her.” She swept her hand at Hockings and then at herself. “Now look at me.”
Erin wore damp, rumpled clothing and hair tugged into a messy ponytail. She knew she had circles under her eyes. She smelled of smoke and gasoline, and there were numerous scratches on her shins and forearms.
“I look like I spent the night in a bramble bush. But she looks like she just left a resort hotel.”
Tillman’s mouth went tight, but he said nothing.
Erin faced her replacement. “Have you been camping, Ms. Hockings? Do you know how to kayak in white water or set up a climbing rope?”
“I doubt that will be necessary.”
“But it was necessary. Or I wouldn’t be here.”
Hockings glanced to Tillman, who offered no backup. So Hockings straightened her shoulders.
“I can fill this role, Erin.”
“You are asking me to trust you to keep my husband alive. I don’t think so.”
“I’m an excellent shot.”
“He’s got that one covered all on his own.”
Tillman stepped in. Erin had crept forward and was now right up in the agent’s face. Funny, she didn’t remember even moving closer.
“This isn’t your call, Erin. She’ll be in the field in less than one hour with or without your help. All you get to decide is if you help Hockings prepare or not?”
“Not,” said Erin as she returned to her seat, folded her arms and scowled.
The two retreated out the door, leaving her alone again.
* * *
THE DOOR TO the interrogation room opened, and Dalton turned to see both the small blond DHS agent and the CIA operative. Both of them were flushed. He stood for introductions. The woman, Rylee Hockings, chewed her bottom lip, and Kane Tillman had both hands clamped to his hips.
Dalton narrowed his eyes on them, speculating. Who did he know that could rattle both DHS and CIA?
He smiled. “You spoke to my wife.”
Tillman nodded, removing his hands from his hips to lock his fingers behind his neck and stretch. He dropped his arms back to his sides and faced Dalton.
“Can you point out to us your route and specifically your position yesterday when you encountered the female shooter?”
Dalton’s smile broadened. “Nope.”
“The general location?” asked Rylee, hope flickering weakly in her gaze.
“Out of sight of the Hudson River on a hill.” Dalton chuckled at their dismay. “I told you. You need her.”
Tillman said nothing.
“She agree to help?” Dalton asked.
He shook his head. “She wants to see you.”
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“You need to convince her to cooperate with us,” said Hockings.
“You know that she asked for a separation. Right?” he asked Tillman.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Tillman shook his head.
“Because I go undercover and stay away for days. She wants me to ride a desk and collect my pension. What she doesn’t want is for me to play secret agent with a younger model who—no offense, Miss Hockings—looks like she does most of her traveling first-class.”
“Business class,” corrected Hockings.
“But not in the woods carrying a fifty-pound pack on your back.”
“I can fill this role.” She was speaking to Tillman now.
Dalton had told them that lying to his wife about his cooperation was a bad idea and that he wouldn’t go without her consent, but they’d thought to trick it out of her.
He smiled. Erin was many things—stubborn, driven, protective—but not stupid.
“My wife rescued that helicopter pilot. Not me. She swam through white water, rigged him so we could haul him out and then got out herself, even though the wreck rolled on her tether rope. She got us downriver, through rapids. It was her idea to leave the kayaks on the opposite side of the river, to throw them off our trail, in the pouring rain.”
“All very admirable.”
“I told you that she won’t want me to go back.”
“You don’t need her permission.”
“No. But I’m not going without it.”
“I don’t understand. You’re a professional.”
“I’m a man about to lose his wife. I came up here to fix my marriage. Now you want me to go right back to telling her to wait at home and that everything will be fine when the last time I told her that I caught a bullet.”
Tillman’s hands slid back to his hips.
“We all know that these people are crazy, armed and dangerous,” said Dalton. “She knows, too, firsthand.”
“You willing to risk her life?”
“Heck no. But we have both been convinced of the importance of this. I think she should have a choice. She’s right. I’ve asked her to sit on the sidelines too long. I wouldn’t like it. Neither does she. I understand now why she didn’t like it. Why she’s been so angry. My thick head has been an asset in the past. But I don’t want it to end my marriage.”
“So what are you suggesting?” asked Tillman.
“Get her to help or let us go home.”
Tillman looked at Hockings. “Sorry for dragging you up here. Seems we don’t need you after all.”
“This is bull,” said Rylee. “I can do this job.”
“We’ll never know.” He turned to Dalton. “That is assuming you can convince your wife to help us.”
“She’ll do what she thinks is best.”
“For you or for her country?”
“Let’s go find out. Shall we?”
Chapter Fifteen
The door had barely closed behind DHS agent Lawrence Foster when it opened again, this time to admit Hockings, Shaffer, Tillman and her husband. Erin kept her face expressionless as she met Dalton’s gaze but was relieved to see him. Something about DHS agent Foster had put her on edge. His questions were off, somehow, different from the others who had questioned her. Dalton winked at her and she could not keep the half smile from lifting her mouth.
“You going back there without me?” she asked.
Dalton turned to the three agents. “Give us a minute.”
The two exchanged impatient looks.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Tillman.
“Understood,” said Dalton. He wasn’t looking at Tillman, and only Erin watched the others retreat and close the door behind them.
“
I hear you’ve been less than cooperative with our federal friends,” Dalton said, and drew up a chair beside her.
“I was cooperative with the DHS agent.” She’d answered all his questions about the pilot’s death, their escape and details about the woman who attacked them. He asked what was in the package that Dalton carried, and she told him it was vials and a thumb drive. The agent then asked about Dalton’s colleague, Henry Larson, or “the NYPD SWAT officer,” as Foster had called him. Maybe that was the thing that bothered her. Why didn’t he know Larson’s name?
“You weren’t cooperative with the CIA,” said Dalton.
“Because Agent Foster wasn’t trying to replace me.”
Dalton made a growling sound in his throat by way of reply that showed both skepticism and some aggravation. Then he took her hand and entwined her fingers with his.
“What should we do, Erin?”
“Don’t ask me to let you go back there,” she said.
“I won’t,” he said.
That got her attention. She waited, but he said nothing else. Just stroked his thumb over the sensitive skin at the back of her hand at the web between her index finger and thumb.
“They want to send you out with that woman.”
“Yeah. They do.”
“So you’re going back without me,” she said.
“That what they told you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“And what have I told you about interrogation techniques?”
Her brow knit and then arched. “You don’t have to tell a suspect the truth.” She let out a breath and drew another. “They lied? To me?”
She smiled, but instead of returning her smile he was frowning.
“And you believed them.”
“You’ve run off on dangerous business for years. Why wouldn’t I believe them?”
“Because I told you that I wouldn’t do that again.”
Now she shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with the man she had once felt was an extension of herself. They’d moved apart now, like heavenly bodies changing their orbits. She wanted to align with him once more. Why was this so hard?
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“I told them it’s a bad idea to send our Ms. Hockings as your replacement.”
She cocked her head. “You did? Why?”
“Because she can’t fill your hiking boots. Because our pursuers are not stupid, and because I promised you that I wouldn’t go out there.”
“Without me.”
Now he was off balance. She knew from the way he tilted his head as he narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying, Erin?”
“You think this is worth risking your life for?”
“I do.”
“You ready to risk my life, too?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Yet you think the information they could get from a living member of Siming’s Army would be invaluable,” she said.
“That information could save the lives of many innocent people. Might stop whatever is underway. But that is only if we manage not to get killed and they manage to capture someone alive.”
“You believe they can keep us safe?”
“I believe they will try. But I don’t think they can keep us safe and allow the bad guys to get close. So...” He lifted his hands, palms up as if weighing his options.
“They’ll put us in danger.”
“I’d say so.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“For being honest?”
“For not going without me.”
“I’m done with that,” he said.
“And I’m sorry for believing them.”
He nodded, but the hurt still shone in his troubled gaze.
“Are we still okay?” he asked.
She forced out a breath between closed lips. “Let’s talk about this after. Assuming there is an after.”
“Erin, I came up here to save our marriage.”
She nodded. “I know it. But trouble just has a way of finding you.”
“Seems this time it found you.”
Erin looked at the ceiling, taking a moment to rein herself in. They did not have time to hash out their differences. He might have told her that he was done taking chances and willing to change. But all actions pointed to the contrary.
“Where are they taking us?”
“Heck if I know. You know I can’t read a map as well as you.”
She rose then, went to the door and knocked. When Tillman’s face appeared in the window, she motioned him inside.
“We’ve agreed to go back.” She glanced at Dalton. “Together.”
Rylee Hockings pressed her lips flat, exhaled like a horse through her nostrils and then stormed away down the hall, back to wherever she had come from, Erin hoped. Erin would not be sad to see the backs of either of the DHS agents—Hockings or Foster. One made her angry and the other gave her the creeps.
Tillman pressed a phone to his ear. “Yeah. They’re in.”
* * *
THE STEVENSES WERE left just outside the Hudson Gorge Wilderness on North Woods Club Road between the Boreas River and the small community of Minerva. This was the same side of the river where they had left the body of their female attacker and a reasonable distance for them to have traveled after that encounter. The dog, Jet, had remained back with their handlers. So at least one of them was safe.
Erin hefted her pack, knowing it was lighter but still thinking it felt heavier than before. Dalton carried the case of vials and thumb drive in his side pocket just as he had before. Only now the new thumb drive was inoperable due to irreparable damage and the vials were full of water.
“So we just use the road, after spending all that time keeping in cover?” asked Erin.
“That’s the best way to be spotted.”
“It doesn’t make sense. We wouldn’t do that, not after being attacked.”
“At some point you have to leave cover and get help,” he said.
“They said they’d keep us in sight,” said Erin. “But there is no one here.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Insects still singing. Jays and red squirrels aren’t giving any alarm.”
“It’s a drone and it’s up high enough that we can’t hear it. But it surely can see us.”
They also wore trackers. She had several. The coolest by far were in the earring posts she now wore.
“They might just shoot us and then search our bodies,” she said.
Dalton groaned. “You are such a drop of sunshine today.”
“Well, we don’t have vests or armor, whatever you call it.”
“Car,” he said.
“What?”
He pointed to the rooster tail of dust growing by the second. It turned out to be a silver pickup truck. The driver came from the opposite direction. He slowed at sighting them but merely lifted two fingers off the steering wheel in a lazy wave as he passed them.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Erin said.
“Could be a spotter.”
She hadn’t thought of that.
“Did Tillman tell you anything that I didn’t hear?” she asked.
“Don’t think so.”
“So, this guy, this Japanese agent.”
“Yes. A Japanese operative working out of Hong Kong,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “Hong Kong, which is where he obtained this information and put it on our flash drive.”
“And he had the samples.”
“Which he put on a commercial jet with hundreds of people and flew all the way to Canada.”
“Toronto.”
“And then, instead of meeting our government’s agent, he changes the meeting to Ticonderoga.”
“For
t Ticonderoga,” said Dalton.
“See, that’s why I’m going over this. You’re the detail guy.”
Dalton took it from there. “But they are attacked during the drop. Our guy gets away. Their agent takes off and leaves the country. The foreign agents chase our guy all over the place, but he made the pickup anyway and they send a chopper.”
“And he makes the drop. But the helicopter—our helicopter—takes gunfire and goes down on my camping site.”
“And queue the chase music. Both parties have been after us ever since.”
“This Siming’s Army seems more like a foreign agency.”
“Backed by one.”
“Which one?” she asked.
“They didn’t say.”
“To me, either.” Erin rubbed the back of her neck. “Did they say how many people they have?”
“Sleeper cells, so it’s hard to know. But you just imagine that they have people downstate. NYC is a target and it’s my city. Damned if I’ll let that happen if I can prevent it.”
“If we can prevent it.”
He wrapped an arm around her and gave a squeeze. “We.”
“Did you tell them about the pilot? I heard him mention his girl.”
“Yes, Sally. I told them. They’ll speak to her. Relay his last words.”
“Good. But it’s so sad.”
She heard the engine, the same truck returning toward them. The driver slowed and lowered his window. Erin stared at the face of a man in his middle years. His hat advertised the sports club that lay at the terminus of this road, but she knew the distance and he had not had time to have reached it and returned. The niggling apprehension woke in her chest, squeezing tight as her skin crawled. She shifted from side to side, unable to keep still.
“So we just let them take us?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“What if they just shoot us?”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Still time to run,” she said, edging off the shoulder, eyeing the distance to the trees.
The truck stopped and the dust caught up, drifting down on them in a haze.
“Hey there,” called the driver, keeping his hands on the wheel. Between his arms was a small, overweight dog that seemed to be both smiling and preparing to steer the truck. Her gaze flicked up to the man to note that he was clean shaven, with salt-and-pepper hair that touched his shoulders, making a veil from under his cap. His glasses were thick and black rimmed.
