Smoky Ridge Curse

by Paula Graves

  “Sorry.” She winced as he touched the plastic. Nothing happened, so he gave a tug and a rectangle of plastic slipped free of the dirt.

  “Hmm.” Brand sat back on his heels and dusted crumbs of dirt away, holding up the object for a better look.

  Bending closer, Delilah saw that the piece of plastic was about the size of a business card. Something was etched into the surface of one side. “What does that say?”

  “‘The Devonian Project,’” Brand read aloud.

  “The what?”

  Brand scanned the woods around them, as if he expected someone to step out from behind a tree and intone, Greek chorus–style, the meaning of the mystery. But the woods remained still and unhelpful.

  “Someone left this here for a reason,” he said finally, looking back at the patch of disturbed dirt at his feet.

  “Do you think your supplies are still there?”

  Brand picked up the camp shovel and started digging again. About six inches down, he uncovered the top of a black vinyl backpack. He gave a tug and the bag came free from the loosened dirt. Opening the flap, he checked inside.

  “Well?”

  “Everything seems to be here.” Brand looked around again, a spooked expression on his face. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He handed her the plastic rectangle and started hiking back toward the clearing where they’d left the Camaro.

  By the time they reached the car, the darkening clouds that had been brewing in the west were overhead, thick and threatening. Fat drops of cold rain splatted against the windshield as Delilah stopped at the intersection with the main road, forcing her to engage the windshield wipers.

  “Go right,” Brand said.

  She glanced at him. “Right?”

  “Right takes us closer to Travisville.”

  “We’re still going to Travisville after someone messed with your stuff?”

  “Where else are we going to go?”

  Squelching the urge to argue, she took a right onto the county road, while Brand opened the backpack and started digging through it.

  “Don’t suppose you have body armor and a rocket launcher in there?” Delilah said with a forced laugh.

  “Sadly, no.” Brand pulled out a cell phone and a wallet. “I do, however, have a new identity and a brand-new phone.” He traded the wallet for his old one and put the old wallet and his old phone into the sack. “This will make it easy to check into a motel in Chilhowie.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “For tonight. There are a couple of places we can stay there, and it’s close enough to the interstate that we can make a fast exit if need be.” Brand hooked the new phone up to an auto charger and plugged it into the cigarette-lighter socket to charge. “Unfortunately, I can’t promise there’ll be internet connections where we’ll be staying, but there should be restaurants nearby with free Wi-Fi.”

  “Why does the word Devonian sound familiar to me?” she asked a few minutes of silence later.

  “It’s a geologic period,” Brand answered. “I think it’s called the Age of Fish, or something like that.”

  “So the Devonian Project would be about fish?”

  Brand shot her a dubious look. “Since when did you ever think that literally, Hammond?”

  “What I’m thinking is that I wish I was home with my computer and my internet and a nice hot cup of hazelnut coffee.” She tamped down a shiver and turned up the Camaro’s heater. “Then I could look up the Devonian Project in peace and comfort.”

  Brand reached across the narrow front seat and brushed the backs of his knuckles against her cheek. “I can’t promise you your computer or even internet, but we’ll stop for coffee in Chilhowie and find us somewhere that offers free internet so we can look it up. Just a few more minutes.”

  As it turned out, he was right. Within about ten minutes, they were driving through the small town of Chilhowie, searching for a restaurant with free Wi-Fi. They found a small fast-food burger joint with a sign in the window advertising free internet connection and pulled in.

  “I’m going to be ten pounds heavier before this is over,” Delilah grumbled as they entered the restaurant and lined up to order. They both opted for salad and settled at a small corner booth to eat and connect the tablet to the internet.

  “The Devonian Project,” Brand informed her a few minutes later, “appears to be a joint federal/private energy-research partnership.” He met her curious gaze over the table. “And guess who the federal part is?”

  It took a second for the obvious answer to click. “The Oak Ridge National Laboratory?”

  “You always were my brightest agent,” he murmured, the warmth in his voice making her toes curl in her sneakers. “It has something to do with exploiting oil-shale deposits in the Appalachian basin.”

  “Isn’t that already being done?”

  “Yes, but apparently this particular project is looking at areas that haven’t yet been exploited because they’ve been considered low-yield. According to this website, the research partnership has found a way to increase the exploitable resources that can be reached by standard hydraulic fracturing.”

  “Fracking?” Delilah frowned. “That’s a political hot potato. Might mean that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory really is somebody’s target.”

  “I don’t think Wayne Cortland is any sort of environmentalist. He runs a lumber mill.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t tap into someone else’s passions, does it?”

  Brand looked up at her. “Like our friendly neighborhood hacktivists?”

  “Some of them lean toward social issues like environmentalism.”

  He nodded. “While militias tend to lean the opposite way.”

  “Not the most obvious of allies,” Delilah said.

  “But if you think about it, these militia groups are big on living off the land and very distrustful of government projects. This is a mission the hackers and the Blue Ridge Infantry can agree on.”

  “So what’s in it for Cortland? How does he profit from siccing his crew on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory?”

  Brand picked up the plastic card, running his finger over the words etched there. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  THE BELLBRIDGE MOTEL was about as seedy a place as Brand had ever stayed in outside of a third-world country, but the bed didn’t sag too much, and if there were stains on the bedding, they weren’t immediately obvious. The Wi-Fi wasn’t free and it wasn’t entirely reliable, but it was the best they could hope for in such a place. Brand had paid the fee and considered himself lucky to have access to the internet at all.

  Delilah set about cleaning the place up as well as she could while Brand sat down in one of the two rickety armchairs and started going through the portable document files they’d saved in a rush while they still had access to the restaurant’s free Wi-Fi.

  “As far as we know, Cortland doesn’t own any of the land covered by the Devonian Project,” he commented as he scanned one of the files. “So what’s his interest?”

  “You know what I’m wondering?” Delilah dropped the paper towel she’d been using to wipe down surfaces into the garbage can by the bed. “Who left you that cryptic little note? And is he a friend or a foe?”

  “I think at the very least, an ally,” Brand decided. “If he knew where to find my stash, he was clearly following me for a while. If he had wanted to stop me, he could have.”

  “If he’s on your side, why didn’t he leave a less cryptic message?”

  “Maybe there’s a reason he can’t operate in the open.” He looked up at her. “You and I know plenty of people who have to work in the shadows, for one reason or another.”

  With a sigh, she sat on the end of the bed. “I thought
I was finally leaving all that cloak-and-dagger stuff behind.”

  “Is that really what you want?”

  She met his curious gaze. “Yes. It is.”

  He felt a curling sensation in the center of his chest. He’d spent his whole adult life becoming very good at operating in the shadows if he needed to. He’d found a lot of excitement and satisfaction in working behind the scenes to keep a large, powerful nation safe from outside harm.

  But there was a part of him, a growing part, that could almost understand Delilah’s attitude.

  Almost.

  “You know, maybe we’re approaching this whole thing from the wrong angle,” Delilah said a few seconds later, examining the threadbare gray comforter covering the queen-size bed. “We’re chasing after all the things we don’t know about what Cortland is up to, but you know what we haven’t given any real thought?”

  He stretched his neck and stifled a yawn. He was tired, his injured side hurt and his head was beginning to ache. The last thing he needed was a quiz. “What haven’t we given any real thought?”

  “Why was Wayne Cortland so all-fired eager to get control of Davenport Trucking that he was willing to order people killed to make it happen?”

  “It can’t be the land he owns,” Brand said flatly. “None of his land lies in any of the known oil-shale fields.”

  “Unless he owns land we don’t know about,” Delilah pointed out. “But that still doesn’t explain his obsession with Davenport Trucking.”

  “Well, let’s think about why anyone would want a trucking company.”

  “If he’s part of the meth game, he might need trucks to haul supplies around. The government’s cracked down hard on pseudoephedrine sales, so it can be hard to get your hands on enough of the raw materials for making meth.”

  “Hard, but not impossible.”

  “But how much easier would it be if you could truck it up from Mexico in your own fleet?”

  “Okay, that’s a possibility.” Brand typed in a note on the tablet. “But that doesn’t explain what he’s up to with the BRI or the anarchists.”

  “Well, we think he might actually be playing the BRI and the hacktivists for fools, right? Using their interest in stopping the Devonian Project for his own purposes.”

  “Right. But what purposes?”

  “And we’re back to figuring out how the Devonian Project could be at all connected to Davenport Trucking.” Delilah scraped her hair back from her face with a frustrated jab. “I can’t think.”

  “Me, either. It’s been a long day. Maybe we should just sleep on it.”

  Delilah looked at her watch and rolled her eyes. “I’m not old enough—or young enough—to go to bed at seven-thirty.”

  Brand grinned. “Maybe we should see if we can find a movie on one of those cable stations the motel promised us and try to think about something else for a while.”

  Unfortunately, most of the stations the motel system carried came in snowy, wavery or both. They settled finally on a basketball game and Delilah scooted over so Brand could sit beside her on the bed, propping his head against the rickety headboard.

  She squinted at the screen, which had started to roll. “Who’s playing?”

  “That looks like Kentucky blue.”

  She slumped back, not particularly interested. Closing her eyes, she let the murmur of the ambient crowd noises, along with the nonstop prattle of the announcers, lull her into a doze.

  She heard a man’s voice, speaking in a low, angry tone. It was a horribly familiar voice, one that had haunted her dreams long after it had fallen silent in real life.

  “You’s a stupid little bitch like your mama, ain’tcha, girl?”

  She tried to close her ears to the sound of his voice, to the harsh mountain twang and the manic evil of it.

  “Cain’t even figure out a simple little puzzle. No wonder you washed out of that fancy FBI job.”

  “Shut up,” she growled, putting her hands over her ears.

  “It ain’t the land that drives him. It’s the access.”

  She dropped her hands from her ears. “Access?”

  “Access is power.”

  She woke with a start.

  “Hammond?” Brand’s voice was practically in her ear, warm with concern.

  “Access is power,” she repeated aloud.

  Brand stared at her. “What?”

  She looked at him, her lips curving in a bleak smile. “Cortland doesn’t own any land in the shale zone. But he owns a lot of land that would provide prime access to the Devonian Project’s target fracking areas.”

  Brand’s eyes narrowed. “Which could be claimed by eminent domain.”

  “Exactly. But only if the Devonian Project gets the green light.”

  “So Cortland’s not trying to get in on the fracking boom in his neck of the woods.”

  “He’s trying to stop it.”

  Brand rubbed his beard. “How does that explain why he went after Davenport Trucking?”

  “Because they have a connection to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.” Delilah smiled grimly as more pieces of the puzzle began to click into place. “I saw it on the public-relations section of the Davenport Trucking website a few weeks back, when I was trying to figure out what Paul Bailey had been up to. They sold the lab the trucks they’ve been using to haul equipment between the ORNL and some off-site research partners. They also have a service contract with Oak Ridge.”

  Brand’s eyes widened. “Which means—”

  “Which means if you wanted to get a truck into Oak Ridge without raising an eyebrow, using a Davenport Trucking vehicle would be a damned good way to do it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Do you think he’s already located a different trucking company to exploit?” Delilah’s voice stole quietly into the darkness of the motel room.

  Brand opened his eyes. “I thought you were going to get some shut-eye.”

  “My brain won’t turn off.”

  His brain was going ninety miles an hour, too. “I don’t know. I’d have to do some research to figure out if there were other trucking companies with contracts with Oak Ridge.”

  She made a growling noise low in her throat, a familiar sound that made Brand smile at the darkness. When she was frustrated, she sounded like a feral cat. “How can we just lie here and pretend Wayne Cortland’s not out there planning to do God knows what to a nuclear laboratory?”

  “We’re trying to get some sleep so we’ll be fresh and alert in the morning,” he reminded her.

  “It’s not working.”

  “Hammond—”

  “What if he’s given up on the direct attack? What if he’s going to try to cripple Oak Ridge another way?”

  “How can we even be sure crippling Oak Ridge is what he wants?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Delilah said. The bed shifted beside Brand as she turned, propping herself on one elbow. He rolled his head to the side and met her gaze in the dim light filtering in from outside the motel window. “It’s just too big a coincidence that Davenport has a service contract with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. No way that doesn’t mean anything. So I figure Cortland’s attempt to take over control of Davenport Trucking was all about that contract and the access it would give him to the laboratory.”

  “I’d tend to agree,” Brand said, trying not to notice how warm and sweet she smelled lying there in the bed beside him.

  “And the point of getting access to the laboratory would be one of maybe three things. Stealing something from the laboratory, delivering something to the laboratory or doing something to the laboratory. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t see what they could steal from the laboratory that would enable Cortland to
stop the Devonian Project. Any research being done at the laboratory can probably be replicated easily enough. Most labs have redundant systems in place in case of accidents.”

  “True. And I’m not sure how delivering something there makes any sense, unless it was a bomb or something.”

  “Which leads to point three—doing something to the laboratory.”

  “But how does doing something to the laboratory help stop the Devonian Project?” Brand asked, although he was starting to see the outlines of a plot taking shape.

  “It’s a nuclear laboratory. Even a small, nonnuclear incident there might be enough to sway public opinion away from allowing fracking so close to the lab and other nuclear facilities. Three Mile Island’s partial meltdown happened in 1979 and people still talk about it.”

  “So,” Brand added, beginning to see the bigger picture, “if Cortland can’t get his hands on the trucking company, he’ll need another way to attack the lab and cause an incident.”

  “And I’ve been pondering that, too.” Delilah shifted positions, rolling closer to Brand until her hip nestled next to his. “What if those hacktivists Cortland’s been grooming can find a way to infiltrate the computer system at Oak Ridge and create an incident?”

  “Surely those systems are hardened against cyberattack,” Brand argued, although not without doubt. More than one supposedly hardened computer system had proved vulnerable to outside attack over the years. It was a source of constant, if well-hidden, concern among the government agencies tasked with protecting the country from outside threats.

  “Probably, but it would take just one little unanticipated breach to cause a big mess. If hackers found a way in, they’d be certain to trumpet their success, and there’s no way Oak Ridge could cover up the breach, even if they got it swiftly under control. All it would take would be for Cortland to whisper a few concerned questions in the right ears about the safety of fracking so close to nuclear facilities that clearly aren’t able to provide foolproof security even for their own computer systems—”

  “The press would eat it up.” Brand grimaced. “And Cortland’s empire remains undisturbed, free to continue making money off people’s addictions.”