by Rachel Grant
In the cave, muscle memory had taken over, and he’d defended himself with the ferocity in which he’d been trained. The same ferocity he hoped soldiers learned here, because in the heat of battle, sometimes only muscle memory, thanks to intensive training, could see a soldier through.
The Army had taught him how to kill, and he was good at it. Very, very good.
He stiffened. A memory hovered, just out of reach.
The memory dissolved before it could solidify. He shook it off. Probably it was an op in Afghanistan. Or Pakistan.
He picked up his phone and dialed. It was time to fire his campaign manager.
Isabel pulled on her hiking clothes and stuffed her pack with all the items that had been removed to dry when they returned from their swim down the river. The trail mix, jerky, and energy bars were all sealed in their packages, nice and dry, a ready breakfast on the fly.
From her rarely used purse she grabbed the phone and keys for the car Alec’s employees had delivered to her on Friday night. The screen of the phone was cracked. She unlocked it to make sure it still worked and saw she’d missed some calls. Odd, since no one but Alec had this number. There was a text as well. A quick check showed the text and the missed calls were from the Fairbanks lawyer Alec had hired for her. She’d forgotten about the legal issues with everything else that had happened.
But she didn’t have time or the emotional energy to face that now and tucked the phone into her backpack. She’d deal with the lawyer later. She had more important items on today’s agenda.
She faltered as she made her way through the labyrinth to the front door. Should she stop and talk to Alec? Give him the chance to deny again that he was behind the article that had presented a caricature of her to the world and called it a photograph?
Could she look into his eyes and ask him point-blank what he would do if she found the cave? Given the slant of the article, at this point, finding the cave would only hurt his campaign. If she were proven right, she’d no longer be the perfect scapegoat. Even worse, he’d have to face difficult questions about his abduction. If voters believed he’d been abducted by pretty much anyone but her, they might have serious questions about his mental fitness for such a high-stress office.
He’d been tortured, like Vin. He’d said as much when describing the dream. This wasn’t John McCain running for office years after being tortured in Vietnam. Alec had suffered through a life-altering event less than sixty days before the election.
If he wanted to win, the cave could never be revealed.
But still, she couldn’t just walk out. She didn’t want to believe he was the kind of man who would put his election above the truth. Above justice for Vin.
She turned down the short corridor that led to his office, thankful that this early in the morning, Hans wasn’t at his desk.
She could hear Alec’s voice through the door, confirming that Hans could indeed hear every word spoken in the office. She couldn’t help but wonder if Robert Beck had planned that as well, and why.
“What are the polling numbers in the Piedmont region?” Alec asked. After a short pause, he cursed. “We’re going to need another poll after the new ad rolls out with quotes from the Sun, if there’s anything we can use.”
She didn’t know which was more appalling, that it was business as usual for him with the campaign, or that he planned to use quotes from the article in his TV ads.
Who was this man? In the last five days, she’d thought she’d gotten to know the soldier and the boss, but now she realized she didn’t know the candidate at all.
She headed for the front entrance. In moments, she was behind the wheel and driving through the main gate. The security guard merely nodded as she passed. He was there to keep people out, not to trap her inside.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“She left. And you just let her go.” Alec stared down the security guard who’d let Isabel pass through the gate without so much as a phone call to Alec to inform him. She had at least a twenty-minute head start.
“Yes, sir. She was driving the vehicle you signed out to her on Friday night. I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware she was a prisoner here. Sir.” The guard said the last bit with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
Alec was not amused.
He’d forgotten he’d given her the keys after they arrived on the compound. At the time, it had been a gesture of trust. It wasn’t like she’d needed them. Or even wanted them, considering how badly she’d wanted inside the compound in the first place.
She must have gone to the forest. To find the cave. His best guess was she knew where she’d been in the forest at the time she sang the song from The Sound of Music. Which meant she’d been on Raptor land Thursday afternoon, searching for the cave. That she’d withheld that information from him was yet another bitter pill to swallow.
Now, like a fool, she’d gone off to find the cave by herself.
Why?
Because she feared him? Or because she didn’t trust him?
There was a huge difference. The fear he could understand. He’d hurt her. Twice. And he’d feel sick about that to his dying day.
But the trust thing, this late in the game, he had a problem with that.
The idea that she believed he was behind the article made his guts clench. He’d fired Carey without hesitation and replaced her with a far less experienced aide who would spend the next week scrambling to figure out the job during the most critical juncture of the campaign.
Unless Stimson said something profoundly stupid or was caught in a sex scandal, Alec would have a hell of a time recouping his lead after this fiasco.
But while he’d been throwing away his campaign, she’d taken off to find the cave—the one he’d been tortured in—without him.
He’d been inside her body and had made her come as he tangled his fingers in her sexy curls. She’d tipped her head back and the sound of her orgasm echoed from the firing lanes. He’d taken and given, and he wanted to give and take more. He wanted all of her. Not just her body.
And she still didn’t trust him.
He turned on his heel and marched to his quarters. He’d grab his pack and set out to find her. To hell with the compound closure and mass eviction of the staff. Keith would handle it. That was why Alec was paying him the big bucks.
His company was falling apart. His campaign was all but over. But the only thing that mattered was finding Isabel.
Actually, he had to admit this was a damn good time to search for the cave. Everyone they were suspicious of had a job to do inside the compound to manage the closure, meaning they couldn’t be in the forest, hunting Isabel with infrasound.
The thought of her alone in the woods, being chased down by men with infrasound—just as Vin had been—made him sick with fear, which almost eclipsed his anger.
Almost.
In his quarters, he grabbed his cell and dialed Lee, who should be landing in Fairbanks soon. He hoped to hell Isabel had taken the phone he’d given her and Lee could activate the GPS and locate her. She was probably still in cell range, but in another twenty or thirty minutes, he’d never find her.
As he spoke with Lee, he loaded his pack with supplies. Starting with his gun and several magazines. More memories of what had happened to him in the cave returned while Alec had been on the phone with his new campaign manager. He hadn’t just been tortured; he’d been interrogated. He didn’t remember what he’d been asked, just that there’d been many questions, and he’d come close to breaking.
If infrasound could be used to torture and interrogate without leaving a mark, without the victim even remembering what had happened to them, then how could the Geneva Convention protect against it? It could take days, weeks, even months of torture to break a soldier, but Alec had reached that point in mere hours. He might’ve broken, if Isabel’s singing hadn’t woken him from some sort of trancelike state.
He might find himself facing a cover-up after all, but not of Vin’s murder; the cover-up would b
e to prevent other countries from adding infrasound to their arsenal.
Today there would be no singing. She’d give no warning she was coming. The bears would just have to deal. She had a bigger, scarier predator to deal with. She would find that damn cave and prove once and for all her brother had been murdered. No one would be able to cover it up. And no one could claim she was crazy or vindictive.
There would be justice for Vin at last, and she could get the hell out of Alaska and away from Alec Ravissant and his seductive lies.
She usually hated ATVs, but today she’d give anything for access to one. It would make getting to the part of the compound where the cave had to be so much faster. After all, she’d seen tracks on Thursday. It was one of the reasons her excursion lasted longer than the usual hour. She’d followed the tracks until they disappeared at the edge of the stream. She hadn’t spotted similar tracks on the opposite bank, but it also hadn’t been a good idea to cross. It was a small stream. Ankle to midcalf deep. But still, crossing glacial runoff in Alaska always held risk. No point in doing it without cause, and on Thursday she’d needed to finish her survey.
But today was different. Odds were, after today, she wouldn’t have a job at the DNR anymore, but it didn’t matter. She was done with Alaska.
She had no clue where she’d go next. She hadn’t completely burned her bridge with the PhD program in Oregon, but at the same time, she’d lived in Portland longer than she’d been anywhere since she was fourteen.
She’d always wanted to try Montana.
But before she could head to big sky country, she needed to find the damn cave. She reached a fork in the logging road and stopped the car to study her quad map. The map was old. The logging road had been added five years ago, and it had been months since she’d driven down this road. After a while, all forest roads blurred together in her mind. If she remembered correctly, this was the closest route to that edge of the compound, but she couldn’t be certain. Detailed maps drawn by the logging company were in her cabin. She’d considered going home to get them, but she’d wanted as much of a head start as she could get.
Sure as hell Alec would come after her once he guessed where she’d gone.
She pulled out the cell phone and turned it on. There was a faint signal. She’d probably lose coverage in the next half mile. She’d find the cave, get the coordinates, take pictures of whatever she found, and head back here as fast as possible. She’d send the photos to Alec’s political opponent, Officer Westover, the FBI, TMZ, and whoever else she could think of. She had no intention of giving the Baltimore Sun the story. They could go to hell as far as she was concerned.
Her one goal was to make it impossible for Alec or anyone to orchestrate a cover-up by the time she was done. The cave existed. Vin was murdered. She’d find the proof.
It was up to the FBI to figure out who had abducted Alec, but if she handed them the cave, they’d have reason to look at someone—anyone—other than her.
“Tell me some good news, Lee,” Alec said after he shut off the loud engine of the ATV to answer his vibrating phone.
“I found her. She’s out of cell range now, but I have a location where you can start looking. I sent the coordinates to your GPS.”
“I owe you.”
“No charge for this. Just find her. She’s in danger, Alec.”
Alec knew this better than anyone, but he hadn’t told Lee the details. “What makes you say that?”
“During the flight, I went through all Chase Johnston’s stalking data. He was sending reports on her activities to someone. I haven’t figured out who received them yet, but this wasn’t a sicko with a crush. She was under organized surveillance. Just like she claimed.”
And Alec had ignored her, yet another reason for her to distrust him. For her to flee.
Another way in which he’d failed her and Vin.
She still didn’t know Chase was her stalker. He’d planned to tell her after Gandalf was delivered, but she’d been asleep by the time the cat arrived. And later, well, he’d had other things on his mind.
“Have you submitted your findings to the FBI?”
“Yes.”
“Good. An agent is guarding Johnston’s hospital bed. When he wakes, he can tell them who he was reporting to.” He said good-bye to Lee, then opened the GPS app. He tucked the phone under a strap on the console and started the engine. There were no roads between him and Isabel’s last known location, but at least with the ATV, he didn’t need them.
He drove in as straight a line as the terrain allowed, and an hour after he set out, he reached her car, parked at the terminus of an abandoned logging road. He circled the vehicle. The ground was still muddy from Friday’s rainstorm. Easy to spot her boot prints where she’d entered the forest.
One hand on the hood told him the engine was still warm. She’d had to drive the long way around to get here, whereas his route had been more direct. He’d been delayed as he gathered his gear for the hike and contacted Lee, but he’d made up time with the ATV. He guessed she had a fifteen- or twenty-minute head start.
Isabel might know these woods, but Alec knew tracking. No way in hell was she going to find the cave without him.
Isabel scanned the thick woods. She’d been here just five days ago, but already the rain had changed things and she couldn’t find the ATV tracks. In all likelihood, thanks to the rain, they were gone.
She’d searched her pack for her notebook—the one in which she noted everything about her search for the cave—and came up empty. She’d had it Friday night, after she returned home from the jail. She’d entered the data in the computer after Alec left. The notebook must have been taken at the same time her computer was stolen. But how had they known about the notebook? Or the data on her computer, for that matter?
Without her notes, she had only memory to rely on, and the area she’d covered on Thursday had been large. The lighting had been different, early afternoon versus morning, and wind and rain had shifted things around. She’d find the cave, of that she had no doubt, but she was likely to spend a fair amount of time duplicating Thursday’s effort because she couldn’t be certain if she’d explored a particular area or not.
This part of the subarctic taiga forest was difficult to traverse with limited sight distance due to the thick undergrowth. Bears could lurk almost anywhere, and it felt strange to hike in silence after months of mindless, endless, relentless singing.
Everything sounded sinister in the silent forest. The crack of a stick—likely an animal alerted by her footsteps—immediately brought to mind the men who’d abducted Alec.
Alec had been abducted by Raptor operatives. She had no doubt about that. Especially after being attacked inside the compound last night. She had a few key suspects, and they were all currently at the compound. They had to be, to oversee the closure. They couldn’t be here. Which was why this was the perfect time to search for the cave.
Ahead she saw a shape that looked familiar—a moss-covered stump she felt certain she’d seen on Thursday. In fact, it might be the one where she first noticed ATV tracks on the spongy ground cover to the south of it. She aimed for the stump, skirting around a thick cluster of conifers, her gaze on the trunk ahead, wondering if it was the right tree.
If only she had her cell phone. She could check the photos she’d taken. But that, too, had been claimed by whoever had abducted Alec.
A noise to the right startled her. She turned, reaching for her bear spray.
In a flash she was on her butt on the damp, squishy forest floor, her bear spray in the grip of the man straddling her legs. Only her heavy backpack kept her from being pinned flat to the ground.
She stared into the coldest, angriest topaz-blue eyes she’d ever seen. “You are not nailing me with pepper spray a second time, darling.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alec didn’t know whether to kiss her or handcuff her. After running off without telling him she deserved the latter, but the feel of her hips between h
is thighs had him more than eager for the former.
She held his gaze in a silent stalemate. “Let me go,” she finally said.
“Not until you tell me why the fuck you took off.”
She shoved at his chest. “Because I don’t trust you not to cover up the cave.”
Even though he’d expected her to say that, his anger still spiked. He released her and stood. “See now, there’s a big difference between you and me, because I don’t have sex with people I don’t trust.”
“Angry sex.” She stood and brushed off her pants. “I don’t see why trust is a prerequisite for angry sex.”
“Oh, honey, you can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me. By the time I was buried deep inside you, anger was the last emotion you were feeling.”
Her pupils dilated, but she didn’t say a word, and he wondered which time she was remembering—in the firing range, when he took her from behind in the hottest, wildest fuck he’d ever had, or later, in his bed when they’d been chest to chest and she locked her thighs around him and moaned his name like it was a prayer or maybe her salvation.
He sucked in a deep breath himself. The memories were nearly as potent as the real thing.
“It doesn’t matter what I felt when we were having sex, not when I woke up to discover you’re using me to fix your campaign.”
“I had nothing to do with that article, Isabel. I’m offended you’d think that given how clear I’ve made it that I’m nuts about you.”
“I don’t know what to believe when it comes to you, Alec. I was ready to believe you cared about me—I even stopped by your office before I came out here—only to hear you plan to use quotes from the Sun article in your ads.”
Shit. Naturally, she’d heard that and not the conversation where he’d fired his campaign manager and thrown away his future as a senator. He growled a curse and dropped his pack to the ground. They’d talk this out if he had to handcuff her to a tree to force her to listen.
