by Cassie Miles
She had to stall. If she could get Harlan to take her into the cabin, she might figure out a way to rescue herself and Claudia.
Standing, she confronted Harlan. He was an average-looking man dressed all in black. His left hand, holding the .22, lowered to his side. In his right, he held an odd-looking gun. It could have been another stun gun. Or some kind of device to cause a blackout.
In either case, he hadn’t zapped her. Which meant…what? He’d said he didn’t want to hurt her.
“Why am I so valuable?” she asked.
“I think you know.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the man who had fired his stun gun at Claudia. A black knit cap covered his shaved head, but there was no mistaking those huge shoulders. It was Blue.
Claudia moaned, and Melinda went down on her knees beside her fallen friend. “We have to help her.”
“She’ll be fine in a few minutes,” Harlan said. “I assume her boyfriend is nearby. Where’s Drew?”
There was no point in lying. “He’s not here. He went to meet you in Lead.”
“He went early to set a trap,” Harlan said. “This time I outsmarted him.”
“We should take the woman now.” Blue’s voice rumbled inside his barrel chest. “We’ll come back for Drew.”
Panic raced through her. If she allowed them to throw her in the back of a car, she’d never see daylight again. They’d carry her off to a new facility, another hellhole with cages. She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let them near her baby.
Her only chance was to play for time. Jack had called to warn them; he knew danger was close. Surely, he and Drew were on their way back here. If they arrived in time, Drew would make this right.
She clutched her belly, doubled over and groaned.
Harlan was beside her. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It hurts. I need to lie down.”
“Have you felt this pain before?” There was a note of real concern in his voice. “Is there bleeding?”
She groaned more loudly. “Please let me lie down.”
Harlan wrapped his arm around her waist. “Know this, Melinda. If you try anything, your friend will be killed. Do you understand?”
She nodded and emitted a thin, frightened wail.
Harlan ordered Blue to carry Claudia inside as he escorted Melinda into the cabin. She knew there was a rifle in the storage room. And Drew’s booby-trapped safe with the bomb. Maybe she could reach those weapons.
Blue placed Claudia on the floor near the kitchen. He slipped handcuffs onto her limp wrists. Taking a length of rope from his pocket, he tied her ankles.
As Melinda lowered herself onto the mattress, Harlan squatted beside her. “You’d better not be having a miscarriage. That’s what happened with the other girl.”
He was talking about Pamela, Drew’s girlfriend from New York. “Did you…kidnap her?”
“She came along willingly after I promised a fancy job in Paris. I found her during one of the rare occasions when I managed to locate Drew. I thought I’d get both of them, but he disappeared.” Over his shoulder, he called out an order. “Bring her some water.”
“What happened to Pamela?” Claudia asked.
“There were problems with her pregnancy. She miscarried. They operated, but she didn’t make it.” He sounded irritated. “You’re different than her. We’ve tested your blood. The fetus is thriving. I’m guessing that you’ve noticed some differences in yourself.”
Trying to avoid giving him information he didn’t already have, she changed the subject. “How did you find the cabin?”
“You slipped up,” he said. “You used your little cell phone to call the Augustana Library, and I triangulated the signal.”
Her clever, triumphant phone call to Lily had been their undoing. In her eagerness to prove Harlan was a bad guy, she’d betrayed their location. This was all her fault.
She groaned again. This time, for real.
WITH THE INTENSITY and focus of a Grand Prix driver, Drew careened along the winding mountain roads leading toward his cabin. In the passenger seat beside him, Jack tried to reach Claudia on the cell phone.
“No answer,” Jack said.
Drew fishtailed around a hairpin curve. He saw two alternatives. The women had either been taken captive and were being driven to some unknown location or they were still at the cabin. Though he hoped for the latter, he was scared as hell. Why wasn’t Claudia answering the damn phone?
Though he hadn’t spoken his question aloud, Jack answered. “The only reason she wouldn’t answer is because she can’t.”
Somehow, Harlan had figured out where the cabin was. The son of a bitch was smart. Insane, but smart. “Harlan has them. They’ve been captured. Now what?”
“They could be on the road,” Jack said. “We can track them using Melinda’s GPS device.”
Which might lead them directly to Sykes. Achieving that ultimate goal seemed unimportant compared to Melinda’s safety. He never should have put her in danger. All she’d wanted was a peaceful, normal existence. He should have listened to her.
“If they’re at the cabin,” he said, “I know a way to get to the door without being picked up by my security cameras. It’s a steep climb.”
Jack braced his arm against the dashboard as the Range Rover whipped through another turn. “How much farther?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
He was scared. More frightened than he’d ever been in his life. Those coffins in Lead convinced him that Harlan was insane, unpredictable. There was no telling what he’d do.
He shot a glance toward Jack. “Would it be too much to ask you for a vision?”
“I don’t know how this is going to turn out.”
Every person who was important to Drew had died. His parents. His high school girlfriend. Pamela.
He couldn’t lose Melinda. She was gentle, resilient and strong. And he loved her. Why the hell hadn’t he told her? Her survival and the survival of their child was all that mattered. He would rescue her or die trying.
MELINDA FEIGNED weakness. Though energy surged through her, she pretended that every gesture was a huge effort. She took a sip of water and collapsed back onto the mattress. Looking toward Harlan, she asked, “How much is Sykes paying you?”
“I don’t care about the money.”
He’d said that before, and she still didn’t believe him. “Whatever the amount, I’ll double it if you let us go.”
“Nice try, Melinda.” He shook his head and laughed. “You’re a librarian. Not an heiress.”
Blue came closer. “She might have a rich daddy.”
“You saw her apartment,” Harlan said. “That wasn’t the home of a wealthy woman.”
“It’s Drew’s money.” She coughed and turned her head away. She’d never been good at deception, and she didn’t want Harlan to guess that she was laying a trap. “He has a safe. Right here at the cabin.”
“And how did Drew get to be so rich?”
This part was the truth as she knew it. “He has an impressive job. You know that he flies all over the world. And you know that he’s always in hiding. He doesn’t trust banks. Keeps his money in cash.”
Though Harlan scoffed, she could see that Blue was paying attention to her offer. He said, “I don’t see a safe.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Harlan snapped. “We have a plan. You know what we have to do.”
“The plan.” His heavy eyebrows pulled down in a scowl. Instead of looking angry, he appeared to be confused. “It wouldn’t hurt to have some extra cash.”
Melinda pointed toward the door to the storage room. “The safe is in there.”
As Blue lumbered toward the door and turned on the light, Melinda glanced toward Claudia. Though she was awake enough to sit up, her eyes were still dazed. And her ankles were tied. Even if both Harlan and Blue went into the storage room and left them alone, they wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to make a run for it.
&nbs
p; “She wasn’t lying,” Blue called out. “There’s a safe.”
“It could be a trap,” Harlan warned. “Don’t touch anything, son.”
Son? Was Harlan using a term of endearment or was Blue really his offspring?
He rose slowly as though his joints ached. Though Harlan appeared to be in good shape, he wasn’t a young man. The strain of double-crossing the FBI and dealing with Sykes had to be weighing heavily upon him.
At the front door of the cabin, he flipped the locks and turned on the overhead light. “I see Drew has arranged his usual precautions. Extra locks. Surveillance cameras. He’s probably got some kind of emergency escape route from the cabin. Am I right?”
“Nothing I know of,” Melinda said.
He paused at the computer display showing infrared displays of the surrounding forest. “He covered every approach to the cabin. If I closed these shutters, this place will be a self-contained fortress, ready for a siege.”
She needed for him to keep the shutters open so Drew would know they were there. Trying to divert his attention, she said, “You could take the money in the safe and get away clean. There’s no need to deal with Sykes.”
Harlan pushed the door to the storage room wide open. “Get away from the safe, son. We’re going.”
“Not until we get this money.”
“It’s a combination lock. We don’t have time to—”
Melinda volunteered, “I know how to open it.”
Harlan shot an angry glare in her direction. “Why would you tell us?”
“To buy my freedom,” she said. “You go your way. And we go ours. Nobody gets hurt.”
Leaning his back against the wall, he studied her with suspicious eyes. “What’s your angle? You can’t be so naive that you think I’d let you go. There’s nothing stopping me from taking Drew’s money and getting a payoff from Sykes as well.”
Except for Drew. If she could keep Harlan here long enough, Drew would arrive and figure out a way to stop him. “You were a federal agent for a long time. An honorable, law-abiding man. I want to believe that I can trust you.”
“And if you can’t?”
They both knew the answer to that question. If Harlan delivered her to Sykes, she’d lose everything.
Chapter Twenty-One
The lights shining from the cabin windows were clearly visible through the trees. From this downhill vantage point, Drew couldn’t see inside. “What the hell is he doing?”
“Waiting for us,” Jack said.
Harlan’s goal must be to hand over all three of them—Melinda, Drew and Jack. A bonanza for Sykes.
Drew parked the Range Rover in such a way that the vehicle blocked the narrow road leading to the cabin. There would be no escape for Harlan and Blue in this direction.
Leaving the car, he told Jack, “There’s a steep ledge that I didn’t cover with surveillance cameras.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a tough climb, but we can make it. When we’re at the top, it’s only a couple of yards to the cabin.”
“For those few yards, we’ll be visible on camera.”
“It’s a chance we have to take.”
“We can’t bust through the door and start shooting,” Jack said. “Not while Claudia and Melinda are hostages.”
“You’re right.” Drew hadn’t figured out what they’d do when they reached the cabin. Their advantage would be the element of surprise. The hard part would be figuring out how to use that advantage without endangering the women. “When we’re there, we improvise.”
Scaling a rock wall in the dark limited the number of weapons he could carry. There was the Glock in his shoulder holster, four clips of ammunition in his pockets and the Beretta in an ankle holster. That would have to be enough.
With Jack following, he moved swiftly through the forest. He had to reach Melinda before time ran out. He dug his toe into a crevice in the rock and started to climb.
THROUGHOUT HER LIFE, Melinda had tried to see the good in people. There had to be some shred of decency in Harlan. Hadn’t he responded when she claimed to be in pain? Wasn’t he a lawman for most of his life?
She sat up on the mattress with both hands resting protectively on her belly. Looking into his eyes, she saw an opaque blankness as though the lights had gone out. Still, she made her appeal. “You don’t want to hurt me,” she said. “Or my baby.”
“Given the self-healing ability I assume you have, it’s not possible for you to be injured.”
“You took care of Drew for eight years.” Harlan had served Drew up for experiments, and she despised him for that. But she tried to be sympathetic. “You protected him. Made sure he wasn’t locked up in a cage. You gave him a healthy life.”
“And look how he repaid me. Instead of cooperating, he ran. When he turned eighteen, he would have been out of the foster care system. Nobody would have kept track of him.”
That must have been the plan all along. To wait until Drew was officially an adult and then to hand him over to Sykes. Apparently, Drew had escaped by a hairsbreadth. “You must have been angry when he left.”
“He ruined everything. Your precious Drew destroyed everything I’d worked for and waited for.”
“Were you supposed to receive a big payoff?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not about the money.” His expression darkened. “When Drew turned eighteen, I should have gotten my family back.”
“Your family?” Drew hadn’t mentioned anyone but Harlan and his wife.
“Belle and I had children. Identical triplet sons. We couldn’t tell them apart unless we dressed them in different colors.”
She made the connection. “Red, blue and green.”
“Strong, healthy boys. Because of my FBI work, I knew from the start that they had the genetic traits that Sykes was looking for. I wanted them to be in his experiments, wanted them to be extraordinary. I gave my boys to Sykes and moved to South Dakota so I could be close to The Facility. In exchange, I was supposed to raise Drew.”
She heard the bitterness in his voice. “It didn’t turn out the way you expected.”
“My boys never developed remarkable talents. But Drew became self-healing. His skill has a multitude of applications. He’s a marketable commodity.”
She prompted, “When he turned eighteen, what was supposed to happen?”
“Drew would go into The Facility. My boys would come home.”
“Sykes wouldn’t release your children.”
“Worse,” Harlan said. “They didn’t want to be with me and Belle, didn’t want to leave Sykes. They had a telepathic connection to him. I told Belle that I’d convince them to leave, that I’d bring our boys home. But she couldn’t stand being separated from them. She killed herself.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His mouth twisted in a snarl. His eyes glittered with insane rage. He raised his gun hand and pointed the weapon at her. “I’ll show Drew what it means to lose the woman he loves.”
Struggling to keep the fear from her voice, she said, “If you kill me, you’ll kill the baby. A valuable commodity.”
“She’s right,” Blue said. He stepped around his father and grabbed her arm. “Come with me. I want the combination.”
She had no choice but to stumble after him into the storage room. The booby-trapped safe was her only chance. “The combination is one-two-three.”
“Ha!” Blue threw back his head. “That’s stupid.”
“Go ahead,” she urged. “Try it. You’ll hear the click and the safe will open.”
He knelt in front of the safe and spun the dial. She tried to ease away from him, to put distance between herself and the bomb. How far did she have to go?
“Stop,” Harlan ordered. He spoke loudly over the whir of the generator. “It’s too easy. Drew must have set up some kind of booby trap.”
Blue had already gone through the combination. “I heard a click.”
“Don’t open it.” Ha
rlan aimed the gun at her. “Let Melinda have that honor.”
Her fear must have shown on her face, because his anger flared. He drew back his gun hand and smacked the side of her head. Pain exploded through her skull.
“Do it,” Harlan ordered. “Open the damn thing.”
She edged closer to the safe. “There’s one more number.”
She turned the lock to zero, took the handle and pulled. The safe opened.
Blue shoved her out of the way. He took out a canvas backpack and unzipped it. With a satisfied grin, he said, “Full of cash.”
“Take it,” Harlan said. “Now we get the hell out of here. Hold on to her.”
Her hope of escape was dwindling fast. When Blue clasped her arm, she struggled. “I gave you the money. Let me go.”
Harlan struck her again, this time in the arm. “I’m not supposed to injure you. Or use the device that induces blackout. But Sykes won’t mind too much if I break your arm or your leg. I advise you to come along quietly.”
When they came out of the storage room, they saw the door to the cabin standing open. Claudia was gone.
Melinda felt a swell of relief. Claudia was safe, thank goodness.
Harlan cursed and went to the surveillance cameras. He stared at the screens. “I don’t see her. She must be huddled against the edge of the house. The cameras don’t show that angle.”
“I’ll go after her,” Blue said.
“She doesn’t matter,” Harlan said. “Jack’s girlfriend doesn’t have special abilities. If you see her, kill her.”
“No,” Melinda said. “You can’t kill her in cold blood. Harlan, you were a federal agent, a lawman. You know the difference between right and wrong.”
Harlan’s chin jerked up. In profile, he had a certain nobility, and she hoped that she’d touched his sense of honor, reminding him of the ethics he once lived by.
“I’ve gone too far,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
