“Thank God,” Jane said. “At least, that’s one thing that’s positive.”
Eve stiffened. “MacDuff?”
“No, he’s doing better. Which freed up Jock to go hunting.” She paused. “And for Cara to get it into her head to follow him.”
“What?”
“I know. I’m as afraid as you are. Caleb and I are searching the forest for Cara now. We haven’t found any sign of her yet. We’ve just got to hope that Cara finds Jock before anyone else finds her.”
“Yes,” Eve said numbly. “We’ve got to hope. Joe and I will start searching as soon as we get down. We’ll split up the territory.” She hung up and told Joe, “Cara’s gone. She followed Jock when he went after Salazar.”
Joe muttered a curse. “Why in hell would she—”
“We both know why she’d do it,” Eve said. “She’s had too many people die trying to keep her alive. She can’t help but blame herself. She cares about Jock. She couldn’t bear the idea of not going with him, helping him, if he was going to be in danger.” She started at a half run down the slope, slipping and sliding, catching herself. “We’ve got to find her, Joe. There has to be some way…”
* * *
Jock twisted hard, and the man’s neck snapped.
His knees buckled and Jock lowered him carefully to the ground.
Three down.
Four men to go.
And the woman.
She was clumsier than the men, and occasionally someone in the party would try to steady her, help her.
Everything was going smoothly.
He’d soon have them all.
His phone was vibrating again. He’d been ignoring it since he left the camp. It was a rule that you never answered a call when you were on a mission. Particularly this mission. Too many people he cared about would be trying to interfere.
He prepared to ignore it again. He moved down the path, making no sound, listening. There was a curve up ahead. He could detect the swish of bodies on the shrubs as they took the turn. If Jock cut left into the trees, he should be able to bring down the next prey before he made that turn.
He moved swiftly into the trees.
His phone vibrated again.
Ignore it, as he’d done since the hunt began. He should have turned it off. But he couldn’t do it while MacDuff was lying in that tent injured.
It vibrated again.
He impatiently glanced down at the screen.
A text.
I CAN’T FIND YOU. I’M ON THE HILL NEAREST THE LAKE. WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER ME? YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE. WHERE ARE YOU, JOCK?
Oh, my God.
Cara.
He was standing in the woods on the hill nearest the lake at this moment.
And he’d just killed three of Salazar’s men on this hill.
Don’t call her. Don’t make a sound that would draw anyone’s attention to her. His fingers flew over the keys.
PUT YOUR PHONE ON VIBRATE. DON’T MOVE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE.
I AM ON VIBRATE. IT WOULD BE PRETTY STUPID NOT TO BE. JUST AS YOU’RE STUPID TO HAVE TRIED TO FOOL ME. I TRUSTED YOU. NOW YOU COME BACK WITH ME. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE HURT. I WON’T LET THAT HAPPEN. IF YOU DON’T CARE WHAT I THINK, DO IT FOR MACDUFF. NEVER MIND, HE PROBABLY LIKES THE IDEA OF EVERYBODY’S KILLING EACH OTHER, TOO. IT’S NOT WORTH IT. DO YOU HEAR ME? IT’S NOT WORTH IT. NOW WHERE CAN I FIND YOU?
CARA, WHY ON EARTH DID YOU FOLLOW ME?
YOU WERE ALONE. I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO BE ALONE.
Such a simple answer. An answer that had led her to risk everything. Dear God, an answer that he should have known would be triggered when he’d left MacDuff’s tent tonight.
WHERE ARE YOU ON THE HILL? ARE THERE ANY LANDMARKS? WHAT DO YOU SEE?
FOG. THOUGH IT’S NOT NEARLY AS BAD AS IT WAS BEFORE. JUST TREES. LOTS OF TREES.
No help at all.
CARA, LISTEN TO ME. STOP LOOKING FOR ME. FIND A PLACE WITH SOME COVER AND HIDE. I’M NOT SURE HOW CLOSE SALAZAR IS TO YOU.
WHERE ARE YOU?
CLOSE. STOP LOOKING FOR ME. TRUST ME. I’LL COME TO YOU RIGHT AWAY. WAIT FOR ME.
Silence.
I’LL WAIT FOR YOU.
Thank God. He had bought some time. But now he had to move fast and try to neutralize any threats to her. He could no longer hear Salazar and his men. They had passed out of his range while he was texting Cara. He dashed off a text to Caleb.
CARA. ON THE FIRST HILL NEXT TO THE LAKE.
He stuffed his phone in his pocket and took off through the woods in the direction he’d last tracked Salazar’s men.
* * *
Find a place with cover and hide, Jock had said.
Cara had no idea where that would be, she thought desperately. As she had told Jock, there was no cover, no boulders. Just a few shrubs along the path. Well, then use what there was available. She scavenged around and found a few large branches on the ground, then dragged them deeper into the woods and tried to rig a barrier among the shrubs.
Hide.
She started to move behind her barrier.
She stopped.
A sound.
A footstep.
Jock?
Don’t take a chance.
She had to take care of Jock.
Her fingers were flying over the keys.
STAY—
It was the only word she had time to type before the phone was knocked out of her hand.
Then an arm was around her neck, cutting off her breath.
“How nice to see you again, Cara.” Ramon Franco’s voice in her ear was the last thing she heard before a cloth was rammed over her mouth and nose. “I’ve been looking forward to this. You’ve been making me look very, very bad.”
Chloroform.
Darkness.
STAY—
* * *
Jock gazed blindly down at the phone he’d just picked up from the ground where Cara had dropped it. Her phone and the single word that was tearing him apart.
A warning. Even at that moment when Cara knew she might be caught, lost, she was trying to save him. If she hadn’t taken the time to type in that word, could she have saved herself?
He didn’t know, he couldn’t think. All he could do was look at that word.
She was the target. How long would they let her live? Maybe they’d killed her already. Maybe he’d find her body within yards of this barrier she’d built.
Agony. So deep, so sharp, that he couldn’t bear it.
He had to bear it. Because there was a chance. He couldn’t let that chance vanish.
STAY—
Block it. Look at the scene. Look at the footprints that usually told the story.
He knelt on the ground and examined the prints of the man who had taken Cara. Concentrate. Tell yourself she’s alive. Don’t give up and fall apart.
STAY—
* * *
“They’ve got her,” Jock said jerkily as he handed Eve Cara’s phone over an hour later, when Eve and Joe met with him in the woods. “I found this on the ground in the woods. She was trying to text me a warning, but she didn’t get the chance.”
When had Cara ever had a chance, Eve thought numbly as she gazed down at the one word on the screen. “You didn’t find her body?”
“No. I don’t think they’ve killed her yet. It was a single man who captured her. Not Salazar. This man was smaller, lighter. Probably Ramon Franco. And his footprints were heavier when he left the scene than when he came. He was carrying something heavy enough to be Cara.” He handed her a white towel. “And this was tossed into the shrubs where I found the phone.”
Joe took the towel and sniffed it. “Chloroform.”
“Which means we have a chance to negotiate,” Jock said. “They took her captive, but she’s not dead.” His lips thinned. “She’s not going to be dead. Stall. I’ll get her back.”
“We’ll get her back,” Joe said quietly. “But we may not have much time. The intent was always to kill Cara and remove the ev
idence of who had taken her from Castino. Like Eve, I expected to find only her body if Salazar got his hands on her. Unless they wanted to dispose of it as they tried to do with Jenny’s body.”
“Of course, that’s what they’d want to do.” Eve shivered. “And they have a deep lake and all of these hills to hide her.” How could they be standing here talking about Cara’s death? All she could think about was Cara’s laugh, her wistful eyes, her absorbed, intent, expression when she was playing her violin.
And that’s all she would think about, because she wouldn’t accept that they could lose her.
Okay, then try to find a different outcome. There had to be some way. Her mind began racing frantically, weighing options, trying to recall her contacts with Salazar … and Natalie Castino.
Joe’s gaze was fixed on her face. “Eve, she’s alive. We have hope.”
He probably thought she was in shock, she thought. He was only half-right. “They could have had another reason for not killing Cara right away. They want me, too. They believe I know too much. Maybe they want to find a way to get hold of us both.”
“You mean use Cara as bait to trap you?” Jock asked.
“It’s possible. And we might be able to turn it around to close the trap on them.” Her lips tightened. “Or I’d be content just to get Cara out of their hands. No, I’d be ecstatic.”
“No bait,” Joe said flatly. “We’ll try something else.”
“We’ll try whatever we think might work.” Eve looked him in the eye. “Remember when we talked about a division of labor about keeping Cara safe? You stayed behind and worked behind the scenes to find out what was going on and put up a smoke screen. My job was to stay with Cara and keep her safe. You did your job. I didn’t do mine. I didn’t watch her close enough. Well, it’s time I made that right.”
“It was my fault,” Jock said hoarsely. “I didn’t think. I was just feeling, or I would have known what Cara would do.”
“And it was Cara’s fault for running after you because she was afraid that you’d be killed like her Jenny, like Elena,” Eve said. “We can blame ourselves all night, and it’s not going to bring her back. We have to stop it and get to work.”
“You may be wrong,” Joe said. “If we wait until Salazar puts out bait instead of going after him, Cara could be killed.”
“No, we can’t wait.” She had a sudden thought. “But maybe we don’t go to Salazar. Maybe we go around him.”
“Around him?” Joe repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Natalie Castino. I told you about the fairy story she was handing me when she called me.”
“She was trying to trap you.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute. But she was wonderfully plausible, and I had to question my own instincts at the time. She’s clever, and I’m sure she plays everyone around her as skillfully as Cara does her violin.” She paused. “You got the impression that she was in control of everything she did. Was she in control of Salazar?”
“Possibly.”
“Probably. She’d made the effort to keep him as a lover for all those years. But she wouldn’t let him know that he was dispensable unless she was prepared to jettison him.” She turned to Jock. “When you called us and told us to come here, you said that you’d been tracking Salazar’s men. Was Natalie Castino with them?”
“There was a woman with them. I assumed that it was her. I never saw her.”
“Then her story was definitely bogus. We have to work from there.” She was thinking frantically, going over her conversation with Natalie sentence by sentence. “What are her priorities? She wants to be safe. She likes power and wants to maintain it. She doesn’t want to be under her father’s thumb or her husband’s or Salazar’s, but she’s capable of using all of them. She wants to be queen and will do anything to—” She stopped. “But a queen needs a crown and a treasury, doesn’t she? That may be the bait we need to tempt her.”
“Treasury,” Joe repeated. “As in treasure?”
She nodded. “She mentioned the treasure while she was talking to me. She asked if we’d found it yet. And Salazar said something about the possibility of a deal later. There was definitely an interest from both of them in Cira’s gold.”
“Then maybe we should deal with Salazar if he wants it, too,” Joe said.
“You have nothing with which to deal,” Jock said. “We haven’t found it yet, dammit.”
“But we know where it might be,” Eve said. “If I have to, I’ll use that to strike a deal.”
“Salazar is desperate,” Joe said. “He’s not going to risk Cara’s being found and talking about his arranging for that kidnapping on the chance that there might be a big payoff. He’ll take the safe road.”
And the safe road was to kill Cara. Eve knew he was right, and she was desperate herself, or she wouldn’t be considering taking the risk. “Then we deal with Natalie Castino. She’s not desperate. I’m sure she wants Cara dead to protect herself, but if you could have heard her talking to me, you’d realize that she thinks she rules the world. Why not? She’s convinced everyone that she had nothing to do with her daughter’s disappearance for the past eight years. She has a superb self-confidence. She’ll think she can deal and get the best of me and have it all. We just have to make sure that she’s wrong.”
“What can I do?” Jock asked. A muscle in his cheek jerked as he bared his teeth from tension. “I have to do something. I’m not thinking very well right now. Tell me how to help. Tell me how to get her back.”
“Any way you look at it, we have to remove Salazar’s men and try to leave him defenseless,” Joe said. “From what you said, you were on your way to doing that before you found out about Cara. But we can’t risk making him edgy until we’re sure we have a way to get Cara. We’ll just plan and set up, then execute when she’s safe.” He added, “You found Salazar once. Can you find him again?”
“I’ll find him,” he said grimly.
“Cara will probably be with them. You’ll want to step in and take her,” Joe said. “Don’t do it. Don’t take the chance.”
Jock was silent.
“Don’t do it, Jock,” Eve said. “Just let us know and keep watch over her.”
He finally said, “I’ll keep watch.” He added, “And you won’t have many men to take out by that time. But I don’t promise anything.” He turned to leave. “I’ll let you know when I find them. It will be very soon.”
Eve watched him walk away. She could almost feel his pain, which was making him as volatile as the IEDs Joe had disarmed tonight.
But nothing was going to disarm Jock but seeing Cara alive and free.
“I don’t promise either,” Joe said roughly. “I don’t like any of this, and if I could see any other way, I’d take it. But I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself to save Cara. That’s not an option.”
“Then let’s hope that Natalie Castino can be persuaded that she can have it all.” Eve turned to go back to the campsite. “I’m going to check with Jane about MacDuff, then I’m going to call Natalie. Time’s running out.”
He nodded curtly. “I’ll get with Caleb, and we’ll begin to throw together a plan.” He strode away from her. “I meant what I said, Eve.”
He always meant what he said, Eve thought wearily. But particularly when it came to her safety. She’d already stretched him to the limit tonight up on that road.
But sometimes there were no limits. Not when a child was concerned.
Jane.
She dialed her quickly. “Salazar has Cara. But she’s alive. Franco, or whoever took her, used chloroform. We’re moving to get her back.”
“Oh, my God.”
“We will get her back, Jane.”
“How?”
“We have a few ideas. Where are you?”
“Right now I’m back at camp with MacDuff. I started thinking while I was searching for Cara about how vulnerable MacDuff is right now with only a couple guards to watch over him. Salazar wanted him dea
d. Who’s to say he won’t try again? Cara has you and everyone else looking for her, and I couldn’t let MacDuff be pushed aside.” She added, “So I told Caleb to go on without me, and I came back. That’s what he wanted anyway.” She paused, then said with frustration, “Though I admit it’s driving me crazy. I want to be out there with the rest of you.”
“I know how you feel. But you’re right, MacDuff was hurt because he was trying to help us. He deserves all the care we can give him. How is he?”
“I think he’s better. I can’t be sure. He goes in and out. But when he comes around, he’s pure MacDuff.” She added brusquely, “But we have to get him to a hospital. I was thinking of loading him into a vehicle and using that road that Joe cleared of explosives earlier to get him away from here. But it would be pretty bumpy, and I’d run the risk of running off the road.”
“Very risky.”
“The fog is lifting. It’s worse in the valleys than anywhere else. I called an air ambulance, and they said they’d try to get to us as soon as possible, but they weren’t sure when that would be.” She added dryly, “Needless to say, I told them not to land on that road.”
“And you’re probably not going to have to worry about Salazar’s men interfering with them if they land in the camp,” Eve said. “I guarantee that they’re going to be kept very busy in the next few hours. I have to go, Jane. Take care of MacDuff.”
“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “You didn’t tell me what ideas you have to get Cara back.”
“There are a couple brewing.”
“And you don’t intend to tell me.” She paused. “You think it would scare me or worry me. You’re right, that’s the name of the game right now. I’m feeling helpless. I want to be with you. But I can’t, so all I can do is tell you to be careful and remember that I can’t do without you. Now, go do whatever you have to do.” She hung up.
Eve drew a deep breath, then did what she had to do. She dialed the number Natalie Castino had given her.
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