Mountain Investigation

by Jessica Andersen

  As far as Gray was concerned, though, they’d missed something.

  He’d been part of the initial interviews of Mariah and her father, and he’d memorized all the reports—both the official file and the assembled news stories. The reports from two years earlier, during the time when Lee Mawadi had been arrested, tried and convicted, had described Mariah as “shocked,” “devastated” and “grief-stricken.” One Shakespeare of a journalist had even called her a “doe-eyed innocent played false by the man she thought she knew.”

  The pictures and film clips had backed up those descriptions, showing a lovely, sad-eyed woman with curly, dark-brown hair and full lips that had trembled at all the right moments. For the most part she’d tried to avoid the cameras. On the few occasions she’d spoken publicly, she’d read prepared statements in which she had apologized for not having seen her husband of six months for what he’d been—a monster—and had urged swift justice for Mawadi, Feyd and al-Jihad. Even Gray, an admitted cynic, had bought the routine, all but forgetting about her once Mawadi and the others were behind bars. He’d shifted his attention away from them and focused on tracking down more of al-Jihad’s terror cells.

  All that had changed the previous fall, though, when Mawadi, Feyd and al-Jihad had escaped from the ARX Supermax with the help of fellow prisoner Jonah Fairfax. Fairfax had proven to be a deep undercover Fed who’d been charged with flushing out al-Jihad’s contacts within U.S. law enforcement, and had planned to do so by facilitating the escape and then netting all the conspirators when they made their move. But the setup had backfired badly when it turned out that Fairfax’s superior, who had progressively isolated him over the previous two years, had turned, becoming one of al-Jihad’s assets.

  In the end, Fairfax had helped al-Jihad escape, and the only conspirator he’d flushed out was his own boss, code-named Jane Doe, who had vanished in the aftermath of a foiled attack on a local stadium. The Feds and local cops had managed to recapture Muhammad Feyd, but so far he had refused to talk, which left the authorities pretty much chasing their own tails.

  Worse, in the immediate aftermath of the thwarted stadium attack, Gray himself had wound up as a suspect in the conspiracy. Which was just plain stupid.

  Yes, he’d failed to pass along a potentially crucial message, but that wasn’t because he’d been working for al-Jihad. He’d made the decision in a split second of distraction, a moment when his version of justice and the law had clashed and he’d gotten caught up in his own head, stuck in memories. And yeah, maybe there’d been other factors, too, but they were nothing he couldn’t handle. He could—and would—bring the bastards down. No way he was letting the Santa Bombers go free. Not now, not ever. Not after what they’d done.

  The thought brought a flash of memory, of concussion and screams, and the rapid flutter of a dying child’s chest in the sterile confines of an ICU.

  Shaking off the image, Gray forced his mind to focus on the task at hand. Moving silently he worked his way through the thick forest, headed for Mariah Shore’s cabin. He had no orders, no official sanction. Hell, he was on probation. He was supposed to be riding a desk, monitoring transcribed chatter and helping with the tip lines.

  “I’m just out for a hike,” he murmured, keeping his voice very low, even though he hadn’t seen or heard anything to indicate that he had company. “Is it my fault I just happened to wander out of the state park and stumble on her cabin?”

  It wasn’t much as plausible deniability went, but he was done with waiting around for a break that wasn’t coming. He’d helped jail Lee Mawadi, Muhammad Feyd and al-Jihad in the first place, using slightly less than orthodox methods in his zeal to gain some measure of justice for the victims of the Santa Bombings. He’d do the same thing again, even if it meant the end of his career.

  “Well, well. Will you look at that?” he said, whistling quietly under his breath as the ex-wife’s isolated cabin came into view. He stopped amid the cover of a thick stand of trees and scrubby underbrush, and peered through, scoping out the scene.

  It looked like Mariah had been doing some landscaping.

  Originally, the cabin had been tucked into the woods, with trees very near the structure, shielding it even from satellite view. Now there was a clear-cut swath a good fifty feet in all directions, with raw stumps giving mute testimony to where trees had once stood. In one corner of the lot, a huge pile of cut and split logs sat beside a gas-powered wood splitter. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the cabin’s central chimney, indicating that someone was home, as did the vehicles parked in the side yard. One was the banged-up Jeep Mariah had registered in her name. The other was unfamiliar, a nondescript, dark-blue four-by-four SUV.

  Two cars. Two people, maybe more? Gray thought, tensing further as a quiver of instinct ran through him.

  When he’d asked Mariah Shore point-blank why she’d bought the forest-locked cabin no more than thirty miles from the ARX Supermax Prison, she’d claimed it was a sort of penance. She’d said she wanted to be able to see the prison on one side of her, the city of Bear Claw on the other, that she wanted to be reminded of how many lives had been destroyed because she hadn’t recognized her husband for what he was.

  And maybe that explanation would’ve worked for him if she’d come off as the grief-stricken victim she’d played two years earlier. But the newer reports—some of which Gray had written himself—described her as “closed off,” “detached,” “unfriendly,” and “nervous”…which weren’t the kind of words he typically associated with innocence. They were more in line with the behavior of a woman who had something to hide.

  Unfortunately—as far as Gray was concerned, anyway—a detailed check of her activities since Mawadi’s incarceration hadn’t turned up any indication that she was in contact with her ex. Heck, she’d kept almost entirely to herself, not even visiting her parents when her father had been hospitalized again a few months ago for his recurring heart problems.

  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, and with all the available information suggesting that Mawadi, al-Jihad and Jane Doe had fled the country, SAC Johnson had ended all surveillance of Mariah Shore, despite Gray’s protests that she was one of their few remaining local links to the terrorists.

  In retrospect, Gray knew he probably should’ve kept his mouth shut. Rather than making his boss take a second look at the decision, his opinion had only made Johnson dig in harder, to the point that he’d ordered Gray to stay the hell away from Mawadi’s ex-wife. But Johnson hadn’t known that she had clear-cut the area around her cabin and strung up what looked to be some serious motion-activated lights and alarms, along with a low electric fence that was no doubt intended to keep deer and other critters out of the monitored zone, lest they trigger the alarms.

  She’d turned the place into a fortress.

  Question was, why?

  “And won’t Johnson be glad I just happened to be hiking this way?” Gray murmured, having taken up the dubious habit of talking to himself over the last few years, ever since he and Stacy had split up.

  Refusing to think of his ex-wife, or how things had gone so wrong so fast after their so-called “trial” separation just before the bombings, Gray moved out of the concealing brush and eased closer to the cabin, his senses on the highest alert.

  He hadn’t gone more than two paces before the door swung open, and Lee Mawadi himself stepped out onto the rustic porch. Gray froze, adrenaline shooting through him alongside a surge of vindication and the hard, hot jolt of knowing he’d been right all along.

  Mariah Shore was in this conspiracy right up to her pretty little neck.

  Chapter Two

  Gray stayed very still. He was wearing camouflage and stood hidden behind a screening layer of trees and underbrush; as long as he didn’t move, Mawadi shouldn’t be able to see him. Gray wasn’t totally motionless, though: his blood raced through his veins and his heart pumped furiously, beating in his ears on a rhythm that said he was right, the ex-wife was part of it, aft
er all.

  And Lee Mawadi had very definitely not fled the country, as all the reports had indicated.

  The bastard stood there—blond and Nordic, loose-limbed and relaxed, cradling a Remington shotgun in the crook of one arm as he scanned the forest. Then he headed for the corner of the porch, shouldered the shotgun, unzipped and urinated, all the while scanning the forest. He seemed to be looking for something, but what? Had he seen Gray skulking in the trees? Was he expecting company?

  Mawadi finished and rezipped, then turned toward the still-open door, calling, “You said they’d be here at five, right?”

  Gray didn’t hear the answer, couldn’t tell if the responding voice belonged to a man or a woman. His brain raced, trying to parse the tiny nugget of information. It was just past four o’clock, which meant the meeting was an hour away. And if he could figure out who was coming for the meeting, it could be a huge break in the case, allowing them to identify more of the terrorists, maybe even the traitors they suspected might be working within the Bear Claw Police Department, and maybe even the FBI itself. For half a second, excitement zinged through him at the thought of al-Jihad himself showing up. Gray would give anything to be the one to subdue all of them, the terrorists and the ex-wife, and put them where they belonged—in the ARX Supermax or a grave, either way was fine with him.

  Then Gray cursed, realizing that if the newcomers were driving up the mountain, he could be in serious trouble. The only way up the ridgeline to the cabin was the narrow track he’d come up, or the fire-access road that merged with the track just below where he’d parked. His four-by-four was off the road and somewhat hidden, but the concealment was far from foolproof. A driver coming up the lane might see the vehicle, even in the gathering dusk.

  Which meant he had two choices. One, he could retrace his path, pronto, in hopes of making it down the ridge and hiding the truck before the other vehicle turned up the road. Then he could boogie down the mountain, get into cell range and call for backup. Or two, he could stay put and hope his four-by-four escaped detection while he cobbled together some sort of a plan to subdue Mawadi and whoever else was in the cabin, then capture the others when they arrived.

  Gray wasn’t a glory seeker by a long shot, but for both personal and professional reasons, he liked the image of dragging in the murdering bastards himself. Not to mention that there was a good chance that even if he made it to cell range, SAC Johnson and the others would give him a less than enthusiastic response. Gray had cried “wolf” before and it had come to nothing, and then he’d dropped the ball on that damn message during the festival, with the result that al-Jihad and the others had very nearly succeeded in their aim of destroying a stadium filled with tens of thousands of city residents awaiting a benefit concert. Which meant that Gray wasn’t exactly the go-to guy for anything these days. For all he knew, Johnson would ignore his report and put him back on administrative leave for going near the cabin in the first place.

  All of which is one big, fat rationalization, Gray admitted inwardly, staying quiet because Mawadi was still on the porch. But spoken aloud or not, it was the truth. He was making up excuses for doing what he fully intended to do, whether or not it was reasonable. He was going in now and alone, not just because he didn’t trust Johnson and the other special agents in the Denver office, but because he didn’t trust the system itself. Not anymore.

  The system hadn’t stopped pampered rich-boy Lee Chisholm from taking his love of violence and his knee-jerk hatred of his father’s politics and turning it into terrorism. The system hadn’t been able to pin any one of a half-dozen other crimes on al-Jihad in the years between the 9/11 terror attacks and the Santa Bombings. The system had let down all the men, women and children who’d died in the attacks; it had failed them and their families twice over—once by not preventing the bombings and again by not keeping the terrorists behind bars. All of which meant the system couldn’t be trusted this time, either.

  That was why Gray had taken his day off to hike up the ridgeline, and it was why, even though he knew he should focus on returning Mawadi and the others to prison, in reality he wanted a far more permanent solution, and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Justice.

  An image flashed in his head, a baby in a PICU incubator, her tiny hands clinging to her breathing tube just as tenaciously as she’d clung to life for twenty-two endless hours.

  Keeping her memory in the forefront of his mind, Gray unclipped his holster and withdrew the 9 mm he’d carried on this little “hunting” trip, and started working his way through the trees, skirting the electric fence and the range of the motion detectors, heading for the back of the cabin.

  The last of the surveillance reports, filed a few months earlier, had noted a rear exit, one that looked new, as though Mariah had put it in after she’d bought the cabin. Sure enough, there was a door at one end of the back of the building, with two windows beside it, blinds drawn to the sills. The rear exit was definitely a point in his favor, Gray decided. Mawadi and the others would have to power down the motion sensors when their company arrived. In that small window of opportunity, Gray planned to slip in through the back.

  If he could take Lee and his ex-wife alive, he would. If not, dead was fine. He’d take his revenge however he could get it.

  MARIAH FOUGHT HER WAY through fuzzy, drugged layers of consciousness and awoke to heart-pounding panic. Twisting wildly against her bonds, she looked around and found herself where she’d been the last time she’d awakened: tied to her own bed in her otherwise stripped-down bedroom. The nightstand and bureau were gone, as were all her books and personal things. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The worst was knowing that although she’d woken up this time, it didn’t guarantee that she’d wake up the next.

  Whenever she’d regained blurry consciousness over the past few days, she’d seen Lee’s face crowding close. And she’d seen the murder in his eyes.

  When the time came for her to die, she knew, he would kill her himself, and he’d relish the process. He’d delight in punishing her for having testified against him, for helping break his alibi and for divorcing him while he’d sat in jail. No doubt he would’ve already killed her by now if it’d been up to him. It apparently wasn’t up to him, though. A second man had stood behind him each time she’d awakened, his figure blurry with distance and the drugs they had pumped into her to keep her sedated for hours, maybe days.

  Broad-shouldered and muscular, the second man had dark, vaguely reptilian eyes. Lee had called him Brisbane, though she didn’t know if that was a first or last name, didn’t think it mattered. The big man had arrived sometime between when Lee had drugged her unconscious and when she’d awakened the first time, lying on the floor in a pool of her own filth, still wearing the heavy layers and parka she’d had on when Lee attacked her. She must’ve made some noise when she’d regained consciousness, because she’d heard voices soon after, and Brisbane had come into the room.

  At first she’d been terrified of the dark-eyed stranger with the faint accent, sure he was there to kill her. Instead, he’d been the one to keep Lee away from her—mostly, anyway—and he’d been the one who, when she’d begged, had untied her and let her shower and change her clothes. He’d watched her, cradling her shotgun in clear threat, but she’d forced herself through the process, shaking and crying, and weak with the drugs as she’d gulped shower water in a painful effort to slake her thirst.

  She’d been almost grateful to collapse back onto her bed, have him retie her hands and feet, and let herself sink back into oblivion. She’d surfaced a few times after that; each time one of the men had untied her and let her use the bathroom, and once or twice she’d been given some sort of liquid protein shake that had made her gag as she’d forced it down. She’d been vaguely aware of questions and threats, aware of refusing to answer.

  The last time, Lee had stayed behind after Brisbane left the room. She’d been seriously out of it, but had been aware enough to see the hatred in her ex-husband�
��s eyes when he’d leaned over her. He’d wrapped one big, hurtful hand around her neck, squeezing lightly at first, then harder and harder, all the while staring down at her with those beautiful clear blue eyes of his, which made him look like a good guy, when he was anything but.

  “I’ll kill you for betraying me,” he said, his voice as calm as if he’d been discussing the weather. “And for making me look bad. You should’ve answered questions when you had the chance. Now he’s coming to make you talk.” His eyes had slid to the door, and the quiet woods beyond. “As soon as we get what he needs from you, you’re dead.”

  She hadn’t needed to ask who he was; she’d known instinctively that it was al-Jihad. The terrorist leader was the one who’d given Lee a sense of purpose, though she hadn’t known it at the time of their marriage. Al-Jihad was the one who’d told Lee to ingratiate himself into her life and use her father to gain inside information. Al-Jihad was also the one who’d told her husband to make sure she died in the bombings. And apparently he needed something more from her now. But what?

  In a way, it didn’t matter, because as Lee had leaned over her in her cabin bedroom, she’d seen her own murder in his eyes. One way or the other, she was dead.

  She’d thought he was going to kill her right then, just choke the life out of her. He hadn’t, though, and now she’d awakened yet again, bound to the wall, lying on her stripped-bare mattress. She thought it had been four, maybe five days since they’d imprisoned her. Five days that they’d kept her alive, feeding and watching over her because al-Jihad himself wanted something from her. She couldn’t conceive of what it might be, though, couldn’t remember the questions the men had asked her.