Dangerous Ground (Fiona Carver)

by Rachel Grant

  “I think,” Victor said, “I don’t need you anymore. So I shall let Ms. Carver and the Slater brothers kill you.”

  “What? You aren’t making sense.”

  Victor took a step forward, toward the engineer, walking slowly.

  The man took a step backward, but all at once he seemed to remember that he had a gun and pulled it out, pointing it at Victor.

  Victor didn’t so much as flinch. “You think I’d let you keep bullets after what you did?”

  The man pulled the trigger repeatedly, but all it did was dry fire. Clicking on the empty chamber.

  Victor continued to approach the man at a slow, undaunted pace. And that was when Dean realized Victor was corralling him, backing him toward one of the pits Dylan had covered with a blanket of muskeg. The pit was full of diesel barrels and sharp metal rods pointing upward. It wasn’t deep, but falling backward into it could do some damage.

  When had Victor spotted it? And what else had he noticed?

  His words, “I shall let Ms. Carver and the Slater brothers kill you,” were ominous.

  Victor knew they were watching. Listening. He was a step ahead of them. And he was armed with a gun.

  The engineer pitched backward, falling into the pit. He howled in pain. The fall hadn’t killed him, but he was in agony, likely landing on a rebar spike or something equally terrible.

  Dean thought of Dylan and figured that was a small justice.

  Victor stood on the edge of the pit and stared down at the wailing man inside. “I think we should leave your boss here to suffer, don’t you, Ms. Carver?”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Fiona had been reeling from the moment she’d caught sight of Victor’s partner. Graham Sherwood. Her boss. He was a civilian engineer and head of the department that included cultural resources. The man she’d called from the Unangax̂ village to ask for a rescue.

  He’d been here, on the island already at that point. He had to be for them to cross paths at the volcano just hours later. He must’ve been on a satellite phone. He’d set up the charges to close off the volcano entrance and probably taken down the tunnel Dylan had escaped through too. Of course he had. He was a structural engineer, and decades ago he’d served as a demolition expert for the navy. He knew explosives.

  Hell, he probably had opened—or planned to open—another portal into the volcano with his explosives. No need to use the front door when a secret entrance was better.

  She wondered if Victor realized he still needed Graham to access the volcano.

  But then, the Russian mafia would probably bring in their own experts. Obviously, Sylvia, Trevor, and Graham had lost control of this scheme the minute Sylvia brought in Victor.

  But why did Graham do it?

  She knew he’d been upset at being passed over for the position of chief engineer for an Echelon-III-level job—the next echelon that would have relocated him to Hawaii, where he’d have been in charge of engineering projects for the entire Pacific region. But was he bitter enough over that to betray his country?

  “Come out, Fiona. Don’t you want to ask Sherwood some questions?”

  Yes. Yes, she did. But revealing her location to Victor didn’t seem like it was in their best interests right now.

  “You don’t understand, Ms. Carver. If you don’t show yourself now, I will be forced to start using Sherwood’s explosives to blow up every building on this base. Surely one of them contains you or the Slater brothers.”

  If he hadn’t identified the tephra- and lahar-covered magazine as a structure, his threat was meaningless. What had her worried was how easily he’d spotted the covered pit.

  Fiona crept forward so she could see Victor as he stood over her boss, who continued to moan in pain.

  “Fi—Fiona. Please. Help me.”

  What the hell did the guy expect her to do? And why would she? He’d probably told Victor the minute she’d reported something was off about him. Which was why Victor had disabled her phone and radios, cutting her off from the team. He’d probably removed the emergency tent and sleeping bags from the side-by-side, hoping she and Dean would die of exposure that first night.

  The fog thickened even as the night deepened, casting everything in inky, clouded darkness.

  All at once, a light shone up from the pit, landing in Victor’s face, lighting him in a bright-white glow. Graham wasn’t going to go quietly.

  Victor snarled and closed his eyes, even as he leaned over and pointed his gun into the pit.

  The rest happened so fast, she nearly missed it.

  Dean launched himself at a blinded Victor, shoving him into the pit. The gun fired as he pitched forward, and she caught the flash.

  Dean, carried by momentum, fell in on top of him.

  Fiona gasped and bolted from her hiding place. She had to get Dean out before Victor managed to shoot him.

  The three men grappled in the pit, the oily muck sloshing as Graham wailed and Dean and Victor fought for the gun.

  “Get Dean clear, Fi,” Dylan said, his voice low and steady.

  She looked up to see him standing twenty feet away, leaning on his crutches, pointing the flare gun at the pit.

  She hadn’t even heard him slip from the magazine. He must’ve done that when she was launching the boat. The vehicle engine would have cloaked the noise.

  She and Dean hadn’t wanted him to be part of this showdown. Clearly he’d made his own plan.

  She didn’t have time to question his actions now. She needed to help Dean.

  In the pit, Dean landed a blow on Victor’s chin, then crawled forward, over his body, reaching for the far side of the narrow pit. Fiona ran to him and grabbed the hand reaching for a hold. She dug her heels into the soft earth and yanked. His skin was slippery due to the oil slick, but she got a grip thanks to his tight wristwatch.

  He planted a foot on Graham’s head and pushed forward, launching himself up and out, aided by her pull on his arm.

  He landed on her, slick with mud and oil, and they both scrambled backward, away from the pit, Fiona moving as fast as she could in a crab walk, Dean crawling beside her. They needed distance. Dean was coated in the same diesel Victor and Graham were.

  They’d gone ten feet. Fiona watched as Victor emerged from the pit, coming after them. Dylan pulled the trigger on the flare gun at that moment, sending the projectile into the Bratva assassin’s back.

  The man pitched forward, landing on the muddy muskeg as his back erupted in flames.

  The fire spread, engulfing the pit.

  Both Victor and Graham let out wails of pain. Victor got to his feet and stumbled toward them, his head wrapped in an orange halo of flames as his diesel-soaked hair burned. She and Dean got to their feet and easily avoided his dodging approach.

  He turned to go after Dean but, at the last second, spun and ran down the rough slope, heading for the icy sea.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The first thing Dean did—after pressing a fast, oily kiss to Fiona’s mouth—was grab a second camera and hit record. He turned, capturing the fire pit where Fiona’s boss writhed, as well as the burning man trying to run for the water. Victor tripped and fell on the uneven ground as he burned, slowing his progress as he fled toward the sea.

  This video would be evidence. Proof of what happened here. His other camera remained in the blind, facing the pit, where he’d focused once he realized that’s where Victor was corralling Fiona’s boss. It was still recording, and between that and this video, they’d have what they needed for authorities.

  No way would he, Dylan, or Fiona take the fall for other people’s crimes.

  Victor stumbled twice more on his way to the water. He should have rolled while he was down, but the uneven lahar wasn’t covered with damp leaves and mud like the muskeg, so perhaps he made the right choice in continuing to stumble toward the water.

  He reached the shallow edge and stumbled again. It wasn’t deep enough to submerge himself, and the burning fuel on his clothes transferr
ed to the water. He was surrounded by floating flames. He struggled to rise, to get to deeper water so he could submerge himself, and at last he did, plunging forward, leaving a burning slick of fuel on the surface.

  He remained underwater for a long time, then finally surfaced, out farther than Dean had expected. But now his clothes were saturated, and he was in over his head. He was injured and uncoordinated and struggling for air.

  “What do we do?” Dylan asked. “Our only boat is out to sea, and we don’t have any life preservers.”

  Dean turned to the pit, where Fiona’s boss had gone silent. There was nothing they could have done for him. They didn’t have fire extinguishers to douse the oil fire, and he’d been hopelessly trapped in the burning pit of diesel and other oils.

  Dean remembered Fiona mentioning Graham had put the kibosh on cleaning up the leaking barrels sooner, even though the locals had been asking for the cleanup for years.

  “We can throw Neff a line,” Dean said. “But none of us risk our lives to save him.”

  “Agreed,” Fiona answered, and he saw she had already tied paracord to her silicone collapsible field bucket. She handed Dean the other end of the line, then flattened the bucket and tossed it like a Frisbee out over the water, toward where Victor struggled.

  It landed several feet short, and Dean reeled it in. This time, he threw the disk. It was short again but closer, and Victor swam toward it and grabbed on. It slipped from his grasp, and he went under.

  Dean waited for him to surface. After a long moment, he reeled in the disk again and tossed it one more time, aiming for where he’d last seen Victor.

  Minutes later, a body floated to the surface, facedown.

  He took Fiona’s hand in his and squeezed.

  He held his breath, his heart pounding as he watched the water for signs Victor was alive. After a minute, he released Fiona’s hand. Much as he didn’t want to, they were out of options unless they wanted the body to float out to sea. Without overthinking it, Dean stripped down to his underwear.

  “You can’t swim out there,” Fiona said. “The water is freezing. He’s not worth it.”

  “It’ll rinse a little of the oil from my skin, and that body is more proof Sylvia hired Bratva to hunt Dylan.” He handed her his clothes. “Rinse what you can from the outer layers. Keep the long underwear dry.”

  Then he stepped into the frigid water up to his thighs and pushed off, torpedoing for the body that floated on the surface, heading for the narrow entrance to the small, shallow bay.

  His body burned with the cold, making it hard to breathe. But still, he was careful as he approached Victor, in case this was some kind of trap, treading water next to the body for a period of time, making sure the head never turned to take a breath.

  Once he was certain Victor was dead, he grabbed the man’s jacket and tugged him toward shore. It wasn’t long before Dean’s feet touched bottom, and he stood, dragging the body up the beach and over the rocks, finally laying him on his back next to the rusted-out Quonset hut.

  Dylan shone a light on his face, and it was clear why Victor had struggled in the water and had been unable to breathe. His face must’ve been coated in oil, as what remained of his facial skin was raw, red streaks, the musculature beneath charred.

  Even if they’d pulled him from the water the moment he’d doused the flames, he probably wouldn’t have survived.

  It was stunning he’d lasted as long as he did.

  Fiona pressed Dean’s long underwear into his arms. “You can wear this in the car and ride in the front with the sleeping bag.” She turned to Dylan. “You’ll be in the back so you can stretch out your leg as much as possible. I’ll drive.”

  “What do we do with him?” Dylan asked. “His body won’t fit in the rear storage. Not with our gear.”

  “We’ll put him in the magazine and plug the hole,” Fiona said, “so animals won’t get to him before investigators arrive. Maybe there’s still a chance to identify him.”

  If the guy was really Russian Bratva, identification wasn’t likely. But given what he’d said on video, Sylvia would probably be desperate to cut a deal and answer questions. Not that there was anyone else she could implicate other than Trevor.

  “I’ve got video of everything that happened tonight. He’s in shadows, but maybe I managed to get his face. Plus, he would’ve needed to show some kind of ID to get to Adak and Chiksook.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t take a military flight; they won’t have copies of his ID. We don’t really know how he got to Adak, come to think of it. He might have been there already when we arrived.”

  Dean turned to face the diesel pit. It still burned, pumping out black smoke. “No way can we put this out.” He placed an arm around Fiona and pulled her to his side. “I’m sorry, Fi. Sorry he betrayed you.”

  She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m still kind of in shock about that. I always got along with Graham. I wonder if this was simple greed or something more?”

  He pressed his lips to her hair. “We’ll get answers.”

  After a moment, she pulled away. “How are you not shivering?”

  He nodded toward the burning pit of oil. “Adrenaline, and that thing is pumping out a lot of heat.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Still, warming oneself by a diesel fire that had, essentially, killed two men was kind of macabre. So he doffed his wet boxer briefs and pulled on his wool long underwear, then grabbed his boots. He hadn’t even noticed the pain of walking barefoot on the rocks up the beach after pulling Victor from the water. Adrenaline was a dangerous drug, because now he saw gashes on his feet that he’d have to treat with antibiotic ointment.

  Later, when Fiona was driving them toward safety, he could deal with his feet. Right now, they needed to get the hell out of here.

  After all, they were fairly certain Sherwood and Neff had been the only hunters on this island, but they had no way of knowing for sure.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The drive across the island would take at least three hours in the dark fog. Thankfully, it hadn’t rained in a few days, and the roads weren’t as slick as the first time Fiona and Dean had set out in that direction. But still, the dark and fog meant she had to go slow, which was the opposite of what her nerves wanted.

  Holy hell. Her boss had betrayed not just her but their country. He’d taken the same oath to protect the Constitution that she had when he’d signed on for federal service. Worse, he’d been in the military, a combat engineer. From there, he’d taken a civilian job with the US Army Corps of Engineers before switching to the navy about a dozen years ago, where he’d moved up the ranks until he was the head of their division for the Pacific Northwest.

  What would bring a man who’d honorably served in the military, who’d then worked as a civilian for the Department of Defense, to decide to cash in on a project in this way?

  Did he think finding the meteorite was a winning lottery ticket, his to redeem? Was he bitter about being passed over for promotion? There had to be something more for this sharp turn in allegiance.

  Whose idea had it been? The only things they knew were that Sylvia Jessup and Trevor Watson were both fully on board, and Sylvia had brought in Victor when things went south. Now she couldn’t help but wonder if there was some undisclosed relationship between Graham and Sylvia? That would be blackmail-worthy, considering he was managing the project for the navy and she was overseeing several sections of the EIS.

  She paused on that thought as the vehicle took a particularly hard bump. “Sorry!” she said to Dylan, who grunted in pain from the back seat.

  “I’m thinking it’s time to dig out that bottle of whiskey,” Dylan said.

  “An open bottle in the car?” she said in mock horror. “What if I get pulled over?”

  Dylan laughed. “Oh, man. Wouldn’t that be sweet? I’ve never wanted to see flashing red and blue lights in the rearview so badly.”

  She thought about it and decided she agreed. It would
be lovely if there were a battalion of cops on this island.

  Dean grabbed something from the small pack between his feet and handed it back to his brother. “Gotcha covered.”

  “You put the booze with the road trip snacks?”

  “Yep. But road trips aren’t the same without Cracker Jack.”

  “Cracker Jack?” she asked. “What are you, eighty?”

  “Our mom never let us have Cracker Jack except on road trips,” Dylan explained. “And Dean . . . he’d always eat the entire box slooooowly, before he even touched the prize.”

  “Whereas Dylan dug through the box, spilling half the contents, just to get to the temporary tattoo.”

  “And then we’d spend the next half of the drive bargaining for more Cracker Jack or arguing over who got the better prize,” Dylan added.

  “Lord. I bet you were adorable as kids, but your parents were exhausted.”

  “Pretty much,” Dean said. “Dad said he always wanted two . . . but not necessarily at the same time.”

  “Mom decided she preferred flying with flight attendants delivering alcohol at regular intervals.” In the rearview, she saw Dylan hold up the bottle Dean had handed him and take a long sip.

  Their story brought back memories of her own family on road trips. Three kids crammed in the back seat, fussing and fighting and laughing. Her father at the wheel while her mom tried to entertain them with license plate games and verbal puzzles. She missed them all so much, her heart ached with it. Both her mother and her brother were still alive, but both were lost to her in very different ways.

  “If you want, Fi, I can take over driving,” Dean said. “I’m warm now. Feet bandaged.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Truth was, she didn’t want to give up the driver’s seat. The minute she stopped having to focus, she might just fall apart. She couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not in front of these two men who’d been through so much.