by Paula Graves
The cinder-block building had been sheared in two. The bottom blocks remained, like jagged broken teeth, but the top six feet of the building had exploded into dust and debris. Mangled steel and wood machines sprawled across the now open area like battle dead, torn beyond any hope of salvation. Lifting the binoculars slowly to his eyes, he saw that nails and screws had embedded themselves in the pieces of shattered wood, shot there by the force of the explosion.
No one inside that building could have survived.
“Hey, mister. Are you okay?” The voice seemed muffled and far away. Brand looked up and saw a bearded man in a camouflage jacket looking at him through dark, wary eyes. The man waved his hand toward Brand’s shirt. “You’re bleeding.”
Brand looked down at his shoulder and saw the head of a nail sticking out of his arm. “I guess I took some shrapnel,” he said. His voice sounded as if he were speaking from the inside of a jar.
The faint sound of sirens bled through the cottony cocoon of deafness. The police, probably. Definitely fire and emergency medical technicians.
If Delilah was here, she’d tell him to get his butt in gear and get out of here before the cops showed up.
But Delilah wasn’t here.
Not anymore.
He slumped to the ground, resting his back against the hillside, and waited for the police to arrive.
Chapter Seventeen
The tunnel shook violently for a long moment. Delilah lost her footing, crashing into the cold concrete wall with a painful thud. Behind her, Cavanaugh uttered a low, feral growl of profanities.
Delilah pushed herself upright again, wincing as the tremors continued for a few seconds. “There went the explosives.”
“Think it’s going to cave in on us?”
There were alarming sounds behind them in the tunnel, and she had a feeling the basement had collapsed from the force of the explosion. But they were far enough in the tunnel now that they should be safe.
At least, she hoped so.
“I think we’re good.” She sounded more confident than she felt.
“Where do you think this goes?”
“If I had to guess, this might have been an old moonshiner route at one time. Cortland probably knows about all the nooks and crannies of these hills, especially as pertains to criminal enterprises.”
“Just be careful. We could come out in the middle of some militia enclave,” Cavanaugh warned as they started forward.
She’d thought of that possibility. But there was no going back.
The tunnel branched into two passageways about a hundred yards farther along. Delilah stopped at the fork and checked her watch. Already one-thirty. Two and a half hours to get back to Brand before he continued on the run without her.
“Which way?” Cavanaugh asked.
“Any idea which direction they go? North, south, east, west?”
Cavanaugh thought for a moment. “The left one goes southeast. The one on the right heads straight south.”
“Are we north or south of Travisville?”
“Just north.”
“So one of these tunnels could, feasibly, take us right back to the lumber mill?”
Cavanaugh looked at her, his mouth open. “You’re not suggesting—”
“Which way?”
Cavanaugh’s eyes narrowed. “Southeast.”
“Then we’re going south.” Delilah headed down the right tunnel.
“Damn it! This is the one that probably goes to the lumber mill.”
Delilah turned around to face Cavanaugh. “I know.”
“Why the hell are you going back there?”
“Because they won’t be expecting me.” She nodded toward the other passageway. “If you want to go that way, feel free.”
Cavanaugh’s eyes narrowed. “I’m just a computer guy. I’ve never wanted to be in the middle of all this cloak-and-dagger mess.”
Delilah felt a sliver of sympathy for him. This cloak-and-dagger mess, as he’d called it, wasn’t something most people could deal with. She’d chosen it because she couldn’t imagine anything this kind of life could throw at her would be any worse than what she’d already lived through, but from what she knew of Nolan Cavanaugh, he’d had a pretty good life growing up. His father was wealthy, his parents still happily married, his family intact.
He’d gotten sucked into this whole mess because he’d uncovered information that brought down a lot of very powerful people. His life was in danger because he’d done the right thing once and earned a target on his back.
“Go,” she said. “Get out of here. Is there anyone you can trust?”
“Evie Cooper,” he said quietly.
“Then contact her as soon as you can. The Coopers will take care of you.”
“I know.” Cavanaugh frowned. “I have information about Cortland. What if I don’t make it out alive?”
Delilah looked at her watch again. “Can you tell me what you know?”
“It won’t be admissible. Hearsay.”
She tapped her watch. “There’s a camera in this watch.” She pointed the penlight at Cavanaugh’s face, making him squint. Positioning the watch, she pressed the record button. “Tell me what you know.”
* * *
BRAND WAVED OFF the paramedics who showed up looking for victims. The nail in his arm hadn’t gone in very deeply; he’d plucked it out with little pain or drama. His tetanus shots were up-to-date, so he should be okay if he cleaned it up soon. Meanwhile, he had changed his mind, deciding to steer clear of the police who had converged on the place in droves.
It was what Delilah would have wanted him to do.
There was no way to drive away; the emergency vehicles had blocked both lanes of the access road. Traffic was backed up for miles now. Brand settled down in the cab of Liz’s truck and waited for someone to tell the police about his attempted dash toward the scene of the crime.
And, if he was brutally honest with himself, he was also waiting for the paramedics to wheel out a body bag from the ruins of the warehouse.
But an hour passed with neither of those things happening. The police seemed more interested in picking through the crime scene, gathering the bits and pieces of wire and detonators amid the mangled ruins of the building. The paramedics waited patiently to the side for the whole hour before the jeans-clad detective who seemed to be in charge came out of the building and shook his head at them. The paramedics packed up their things and drove away, clearing a path for traffic to start moving again.
Brand sat like a stone, gazing at the ruins of the building with his heart in his throat. Why had the detective sent the paramedics away? Wouldn’t they be the ones to carry a body out?
Maybe the detective had called for the coroner.
But another thirty minutes passed without any sign of a medical examiner’s wagon, and even some of the police started to disperse, allowing more room for the backed-up traffic to pass through.
Brand didn’t want to leave, not without knowing what had happened to Delilah. But lingering here much longer would only put him directly in the crosshairs of the local cops, a complication he definitely didn’t need.
Think, Brand. Why do you think she was in the building?
Because of the GPS tracker.
He pulled out his phone and checked the tracker program. But the tracker light didn’t show up at all.
He laid his head back against the headrest, his heart aching. She must have been in the building.
Unless someone had found the tracker, he realized. What if they’d sent the tracker off in that box to lead him on a wild-goose chase?
A dangerous flood of hope shot through him as he realized he’d seen them lock her inside the shed. Seen them throw the gas in. But he’d never seen them put her in the bo
x.
What if she’d never been in the box?
He had to go back to the lumber mill and get a look inside that shed.
* * *
SHE’D LET CAVANAUGH have the penlight from her keychain. She hoped the battery would last long enough to get him safely out of the tunnel, because navigating in the dark was a pain in the backside. The air was chilly but stale, though there was clearly some sort of ventilation system at work, because she didn’t feel any effects of limited oxygen. And unless her imagination was playing tricks on her, she thought she could see the faintest hint of light a hundred yards ahead.
She could make out the concrete walls of the tunnel, the wooden supports that crisscrossed the structure to keep it from caving in. It wasn’t the most professional job of tunnel building she’d ever seen, but someone had gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to make sure the passageway didn’t collapse.
It was big enough to accommodate the smuggling of almost anything, she thought. Drugs, guns, explosives, even people. So why had Cortland blown up the building? Was it purely to kill her and Cavanaugh? Or had they been planning to destroy the warehouse all along, and using the explosion to get rid of her and Cavanaugh was just a stroke of luck?
The air was cooler and fresher as she neared the lighter part of the tunnel. The wall took a sudden, sharp turn, revealing an opening ahead. The light was painfully bright to her still-sensitive eyes, sending a jolt of fiery pain shooting through her head and a fresh flood of tears streaming from her eyes. She blinked the tears away, standing still until her eyes adjusted enough to make out metal bars at the open end of the tunnel.
With a grimace, she moved carefully toward the metal grille, staying close to the wall to minimize her visibility to anyone who might be on the outside. Cold air poured through the opening, scattering chill bumps over her skin as she edged her way to the metal bars.
It took a moment to realize she was gazing down on the back side of Cortland Lumber.
* * *
BRAND HADN’T TAKEN two steps inside the gates of Cortland Lumber when a man in a dark green baseball cap seemed to glide out of the shadows to stand in front of him. The man was tall, nearly Brand’s height, but lean and wiry, as if he’d missed a few meals over the last little while. He was backlit by the early afternoon sun, but Brand could make out enough of his dark features to realize he was looking at the man Delilah had filmed outside the bank in Blakeville.
Once again, Brand felt a glimmer of recognition. He knew this man, somehow. Had seen his face before.
“Don’t be stupid,” the man said.
“Who the hell are you?” Brand asked.
The man smiled grimly, and Brand felt a click in his brain. That smile, feral and roguish, had been on the wall of every post office in America at one time. It had also been posted on the bulletin board in Brand’s own office until just a few short years ago, when the man in question had died in an explosion in the South American republic of Sanselmo.
“You’re dead,” Brand said.
“Do I really have to quote Mark Twain?” the man asked.
“You blew up in a munitions-factory explosion in Tesoro almost four years ago. The FBI confirmed your identity through DNA.”
“DNA can be faked.” Sinclair Solano, formerly one of the FBI’s most wanted for acts of terror against U.S. interests in South America, gave such a nonchalant shrug that Brand blinked a couple of times to make sure he hadn’t been knocked cold by the warehouse explosion and was just dreaming this bizarre encounter.
“What do you want?” he asked when Solano didn’t disappear.
“To stop you from getting yourself killed.”
Brand shook his head, still not sure he wasn’t hallucinating. “You do realize I’m an FBI agent.”
“Not at the moment,” Solano reminded him.
“You were in Blakeville yesterday. Outside the bank.”
Solano’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t respond.
“What are you up to?”
“Someone sent me to keep an eye on you and Delilah Hammond.”
“Who?”
Solano’s eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t answer.
“Get out of my way.”
Solano’s gaze scanned the lumberyard before turning back to Brand. “I know about the explosion. I know Delilah was in the building. I’m sorry.”
Brand’s heart skipped a beat. “How can you know?”
“I planted a bug in the air-vent system in the lumberyard office,” Solano said. “I’ve been monitoring conversations the last few days. They delivered Delilah and a man named Dixon to the Bradley Road warehouse and blew it up with them inside. It’s all recorded. You’ll have the evidence you need. But you have to get out of here before you mess up everything.”
Brand shook his head. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because, believe it or not, I’m not one of the bad guys.” His face darkened with old regret. “Not anymore.”
A customer passed them on the way inside the lumberyard. He gave them a curious look as he walked by. Brand followed the man’s gaze and saw that the bloody patch on the shoulder of his jacket had begun to spread.
“Delilah’s not dead,” Brand said, needing to believe it.
Solano’s answering look was full of pity. “You have to get out of here now, before Cortland’s men spot you.”
A couple of men came out of the office even as Solano was speaking, their gazes sweeping over the lumberyard. Brand walked slowly sideways, toward the exit, taking care not to look as if he were in a hurry. “I need to speak to you again.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Brand paused, gazing warily at the man he’d spent years loathing for his crimes. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Solano gave him a long, hard look. “You don’t.” He turned and disappeared through a narrow path between stacks of lumber.
Brand had parked up the hill and entered the lumberyard on foot, thinking he’d be less conspicuous that way. But he wondered if he’d been thinking at all. Everything he’d done since the warehouse blast had been fueled by emotion—grief, rage, hope, desperation—instead of rational thought. He’d entered the lumberyard with no plan, no protection, dripping blood and looking like a shell-shocked battle survivor.
He had to get himself under control. If Delilah was alive, she didn’t need him falling apart and screwing up everything they’d tried to accomplish.
Reaching the truck on wobbly legs, he pulled himself into the cab and sat in the quiet for a moment, trying to forget everything he was feeling. He needed to tuck those emotions out of the way, save them for later, when he had time and space to stop thinking and start feeling again.
Solano had said Cortland and his men believed Delilah and someone named Dixon had expired in the explosion, which meant she’d definitely been in the warehouse. But the police detective had clearly indicated to the paramedics that they’d found no one inside the building after what had seemed like a pretty thorough search.
So if Delilah had been in the building, but wasn’t there when it exploded, where had she gone? Brand had seen the men taking the box into the warehouse, but his eyes had been off the place for a few excruciating minutes while he tried to find a place to turn around. When he’d gotten back in sight of the place, Cortland’s men were already setting the explosives. Which meant they still believed she was inside as well.
So if she’d gotten out of the place, how had she done it?
He pulled his burner phone out of his pocket and turned it on. The display stared back at him, daring him to make a call that could cost him his freedom, maybe for good.
But it was a chance he had to take.
He dialed the number of the Bitterwood Police Department and started to ask for Ivy Hawkins when movement to the left of t
he truck caught his eye. Someone was walking through the grove of young trees about fifty yards away, moving with stealth. He caught a glimpse of a black jacket between the long limbs of pine saplings that grew on the hillside, then a flash of long dark hair twisted up in a messy ponytail.
His heart skipped a beat.
* * *
DELILAH FALTERED TO a halt in the middle of the pine grove, wiping her eyes. The cold, combined with the lingering effects of the tear gas, conspired to blind her as she tried to make her way silently to the edge of the lumberyard property. She’d spent the time it took to unscrew the metal grille from the tunnel entrance trying to figure out the best way to confront Cortland, settling on the simplest answer possible.
Nobody expected a visit from a dead woman. And if she could make her stand against Cortland in public, surrounded by ordinary people going about their workday, buying lumber and supplies, she just might be able to walk out of there alive. Someone would call the police, of course. But that was good. She wanted the police to come. If she had a phone on her, she’d call the police herself.
If the spy watch had worked as it was supposed to, she had Nolan Cavanaugh’s testimony on video. And even if she didn’t, Cavanaugh had given her names and locations that good investigators might be able to mine to find the truth.
She also had her own testimony about what had happened to her when she tried to talk to Cortland. She’d been locked up, gassed, kidnapped and damn near killed. She could testify to all of those acts. There was a pile of rubble a mile up the road to back her up.
She took a few steadying breaths and pushed away from the pine tree trunk she’d been leaning against, ready to face the dragon in his lair.
But a snap of a twig behind her froze her in place.
The hair on the back of her neck bristled. Her muscles bunched, ready for fight or flight, whichever might be required.
“You look damn good for someone who just blew up in a warehouse.”
Brand’s voice, low and warm just a few inches behind her, made her knees buckle. She grabbed the tree trunk to keep from falling and turned around, half-afraid she’d imagined his voice.
