Deadly Sight

by Cindy Dees

  “Get out,” he told her tiredly.

  She nodded like a lost little girl and climbed out of his bed. She bent down to retrieve her torn clothing and, when she straightened, said quietly, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Chapter 11

  Sam stared into her coffee cup hollow-eyed. She felt...empty. Understanding the complex psychology of what had happened between her and Gray last night didn’t do a darned thing to make it hurt any less. She’d overstepped her bounds with him on an epic scale. She’d known she should wait and let him make the first move. She’d known not to rip away the thin veil of normalcy he hid behind. She’d known better than to push him faster and further than he wanted to go.

  But her own lust and need to comfort the man had overtaken her better judgment. As usual, she’d leaped before she’d looked. And now she was paying the price.

  That, she could handle. But what about Gray? Had she just set his recovery back by years? Forever? Funny how he’d been the one talking about guilt last night. This morning, she’d lay odds her guilt was even greater than his. And that was saying something.

  She heard stirring in Gray’s bedroom and dread filled her. A burning need to run away and hide nearly sent her out the back door. If only all those damned counselors over the years hadn’t pounded it into her head that no problem was solved by running away from it!

  Frankly, in her experience, she’d found that some problems were best solved by simply leaving. But, she was forced to admit—reluctantly—that Gray was not one of those problems. She’d made this mess, and she could just suck it up and tough it out.

  She had a job to do. They both had a job to do. She would do her best to figure out what Proctor and his cronies were up to, stop them from doing something awful, and then she and Gray would go their separate ways—him more broken than ever, and her sadder but wiser about messing with other people’s hearts and minds.

  Gray walked into the kitchen looking more handsome and patrician than ever. His polo shirt and khaki slacks were impeccable, his hair perfect, his expression as cool and distant as she’d ever seen it. Wow. He’d really put on some suit of emotional armor this morning. Funny how all that physical perfection he cloaked himself in now looked like nothing more than the mask it really was.

  “Good morning,” he intoned.

  “’Morning,” she mumbled.

  “Aren’t you usually asleep at this time of day?” he asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

  It was exceedingly obvious that she couldn’t sleep or else she’d be back in her bed snoring right now. She shrugged and didn’t bother to answer the question.

  He sat down across from her and reached for the newspaper she’d already driven down to the convenience store to purchase. She’d read the thing cover to cover, and nothing notable or conversation-worthy had happened in the world overnight.

  Unable to stand the tension hanging thick and silent between them, she got up, put her cup in the sink, and headed for her bedroom. She crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head. She was a blazing idiot. This was all her fault. She’d ruined the easy relationship between them by being so sure she could make everything all better for him. Gray was a grown man. If falling into bed with some chick would fix his heart, he would have done it long ago. Or maybe he’d already tried that and knew it wouldn’t work. Yup, she was officially a ginormous idiot.

  She listened in agony to the sounds of Gray making breakfast for himself and cleaning up afterward. Even from in here, it sounded like the careful routine of a man on the brink of shattering. She heard a jingle of car keys and a door opening and closing. Deep silence settled over the house, and she had no idea if he was ever coming back. Black depression filled her, and she stared sightlessly at a wall for a very long time.

  Only the sound of the phone ringing roused her from her stupor. In hopes that it might be Gray, she tore out of bed and raced for the kitchen, snatching up the receiver on the third ring. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  A male voice she didn’t recognize replied, “Uhh, hello. Is Grayson Pierce available?”

  “He’s not here right now.”

  “When do you expect him back?”

  She confessed uncomfortably, “I have no idea.”

  The man swore under his breath. And then, “Could you give him a message?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell him Brighton called and his employment records have been hacked.”

  “Ahh. That would be Proctor,” she responded.

  “Wendall Proctor?”

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  The man replied sharply, “Give Gray another message for me. Tell him Proctor’s a dangerous sonofabitch and don’t underestimate him.”

  “I will.”

  The man hung up without bothering to identify himself or to say goodbye. She stared at the phone. Who in the world had that been? Yet again, frustration at not being able to jump onto the internet and find out who Brighton was filled her. No doubt about it. She was a creature of the twenty-first century.

  She also wasn’t the kind of person to sit around moping, and do nothing for long. The walls were closing in on her fast and she had to get out of here. She packed a quick snack in a rucksack and headed out. She drove the Ladybug back to the ridge across the valley from Proctor’s compound. The faster the mystery of Wendall Proctor was solved, the faster she could get away from this crazy place. Away from Gray and his broken soul, and the mess she’d made of everything.

  Cognizant of the response their last junket to this hillside had caused, she was careful to stick to the cover of trees as she worked her way close enough to observe the Proctor compound. The day was overcast, but still horribly bright to her. It was a good-news-bad-news scenario, however. The bad news meant she had to wear her darkest sunglasses and put up with the pain. The good news was the daylight meant she saw details with blinding clarity.

  She focused her attention on that mysterious barn Molly had known so little about. She’d been watching it for maybe ten minutes when a truck approached its far side and paused. A moment later, it pulled forward and disappeared inside the structure. She swore under her breath. If the door only faced this way, she would have gotten a look straight into it!

  Frustrated, she eyed the fields next to the barn. There was pretty heavy tree cover beyond the plowed acreage and past the tall hurricane fencing. Who’d paid for that snazzy fence, anyway? Probably whoever bankrolled the generous allowances Proctor passed out.

  It would be risky getting close to the compound, but if she were on the other side of the valley, she’d be able to maneuver into a position to see into the mystery barn. Decision made, she hiked back to the Ladybug and drove around the far end of the valley to approach the Proctor property from the back side. Navigating mostly by feel—Lord, what she wouldn’t give for a nice GPS navigation system right about now—she pulled the Beetle off a small dirt road and hid it behind a stand of blackberry bushes that no doubt scratched the heck out of its paint job. With a silent apology to the little car, she set out into the woods.

  The underbrush was thick and the going was slow. Plus, she had to keep a watchful eye out for trip wires, pressure plates, motion detectors or other gadgets Proctor might have placed out here in defense of his privacy. She’d call the guy paranoid if she didn’t happen to be sneaking up on his compound to spy on it at this very moment.

  Eventually, she spotted a dull glint of aluminum through the trees ahead. The fence. She slowed down and approached it cautiously. She hugged the darkest shadows of a giant spruce tree, peering around it just far enough to spot the mystery barn perhaps a quarter mile away at the other end of a long field of plowed dirt.

  She’d been standing there, motionless, for perhaps two minutes when she heard movement nearby. Really nearby. She looked around frantically, but saw no one. The trees were too close, the undergrowth too thick for her vision to penetrate. And she didn’t have a bit of cover within diving range, ei
ther.

  Desperate, she looked around for options and saw only one. It wasn’t ideal, but what other choice did she have? She grabbed the tree trunk beside her, hugging it for all she was worth. Scratching her cheek and bloodying her hands as she scrambled up the rough trunk by main force, she grabbed for the lowest major branch.

  She swung her feet around the limb and levered herself up to a sitting position on it. From there, she was able to stand and reach for the next big limb. She climbed as fast as she could, working her way high in the mighty tree before the limbs were too flimsy to support her weight.

  And then she prayed. She didn’t have a lot of cover from anyone below who happened to look straight up into the tree. But hopefully it would be enough.

  She watched in dismay as a man passed by the tree, toting an AK-47 and moving aggressively. What had she done to set off a trap? She hadn’t seen anything. It was almost as if they had heat-seeking technology out here or something. But that wasn’t possible. Not deep in the heart of the NRQZ.

  Voices called back and forth below and she listened in tense disbelief as they talked about the intruder’s possible escape route. How in the heck were they spotting anyone who even came near them?

  Not that it was going to matter if they found her now.

  * * *

  Once he’d signed into Shady Grove, Gray emailed Jeff Winston’s private address immediately. All he typed was Did you tell Sam? No need to spell out exactly what he was talking about. Jeff would know.

  A reply came back in under a minute. The answer was a single word. No.

  Gray leaned back, staring at the word and thinking hard. Had he overreacted to the things she’d said last night? Did she really have no idea what had happened to Emily and the kids? Some of her comments made it seem so clear that she knew everything. The stuff about not letting himself be a victim, too. About him needing to actually live...

  She was wrong about that, of course. His life had effectively ended the same night his family’s had. For a while, he’d told himself he would live for vengeance. That had been enough to keep him going until the police caught the bastard.

  He and most of his superiors were convinced the murderer was a hit man for hire, but every lead to who might have hired the bastard had died with the guy in a shoot-out with the Denver police. After a couple of years, even he’d been forced to admit defeat in tracking who’d paid for the hit.

  He’d made plenty of enemies over the years in his work for the National Security Agency. He would probably never know which one of them had gone after him through his wife and kids. And after a few years, he’d realized he didn’t need to know. Emily and the kids were dead, and that was all that really mattered.

  When he’d given up on vengeance, he’d already been back at work for a while and was deeply involved in several cases. He’d turned his focus to his job and made that his reason for living.

  And then Sam had come along and challenged everything he’d become. How dare she trick him into having sex with her like that? She’d taken advantage of him in a moment of extreme weakness—

  It wasn’t her fault, dammit. He’d wanted the sex. He could’ve stopped at any time. But he hadn’t. He’d let her past his guard. As much as he’d love to blame her for last night, he couldn’t honestly lay it all at her feet.

  She was right about one thing. It must never happen again. And the best way to make that happen was to get as far away from her as he could as fast as possible. To that end, he made a phone call to a very specialized working group within the NSA and plowed through a lengthy identification process before he was allowed to speak to an actual human being.

  “Barrett here,” a voice finally announced.

  “Agent Grayson Pierce. I need a real-time satellite surveillance report on a location.”

  “Contrary to popular belief, Agent Pierce, we don’t keep eyes-in-the-sky on every square inch of terra firma.”

  “I bet you have eyes on the spot I want to look at. The way I hear it, a request for satellite surveillance of this area was in the works a few days ago.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Shady Grove, West Virginia.”

  Silence met that announcement. And then, “Stand by.”

  Uh-huh. That’s what he’d thought. The NSA darned well did keep an eye on one of its most important and secure installations from above.

  One minute stretched into two. And then five. Finally, Barrett came back on the line. “Say priority access for your request.”

  Gray pulled out the big guns and gave the highest emergency duress code he knew. It was the one that indicated a field agent was in mortal danger and in need of immediate assistance. It wasn’t like anyone was holding a gun to his head, exactly, but if he didn’t get this thing done and get away from Sam damned soon, someone might as well just shoot him.

  Barrett spoke into his ear. “The telemetry is coming up now.” A pause. “Visual scans show no unusual activity. All roads within the search area are clear of hostile equipment.”

  No surprise. Tanks and armored personnel carriers didn’t drive around West Virginia on a regular basis.

  “By the way,” Gray asked while the guy at the other end of the phone scanned the area, “have you guys had any luck nailing down the source of the bursts of electronic interference that have been shutting down the NRQZ antennas?”

  “Nope. Stuff’s coming out of thin air. Or more precisely, the middle of the damned woods—” The guy broke off. “Well, hello, there.”

  “Have you got something?” Gray asked when the guy didn’t elaborate.

  “Infrared scan shows a cluster of humans moving in what appears to be a concerted search pattern.”

  “Zoom in on that,” Gray said, interested. Were Proctor’s boys chasing some hapless hiker away from their compound this morning?

  “Roger. Stand by.” Then, “I’ve got a stationary human within the search perimeter. My assessment is that’s the likely target of the search.”

  “State location of target,” Gray instructed.

  The guy rattled off a pair of lat-long coordinates practically on top of the Proctor compound. “Can you send me a link to the imagery?” Gray asked.

  “Yes. Give me the ISP address of the computer you’re sitting at, sir.”

  The lengthy alphanumeric sequence was written on a piece of paper taped to the desk. Gray read it off quickly. In a moment, his monitor flickered to life and an image that looked a lot like weather radar popped up.

  A white arrow cursor tracked across the screen, stopping on a blob of yellow. Barrett was speaking again. “Here’s the target. If you’ll notice, these eight hot spots are moving right to left across your screen in a standard search pattern.”

  He watched for a few seconds. “How is it they haven’t spotted the target? They all but walked on top of him.”

  “He must be hidden.”

  Gray pictured the forest surrounding the Proctor compound. There were stands of brush here and there, but not thick enough cover to hide an adult from a determined search effort. Besides, he’d bet Proctor’s men knew every square inch of the area. They’d know exactly where to look for a hidden observer.

  “Is it possible to zoom in on the target?” he asked Barrett.

  A snort was his only answer. The image zoomed in rapidly until the yellow blob nearly filled the screen. It resolved into a distinctly human shape. Although, the guy’s posture was strange. Gray stared at it for several seconds until it dawned on him that the guy was hugging something.

  “Looks like he’s up a tree, sir,” Barrett commented.

  Of course. Questions exploded across Gray’s brain. Who else was out there spying on Wendall Proctor? Did he and Sam have an ally they didn’t know about, or was this an enemy of Wendall’s, maybe the real problem behind the goings-on at the Proctor compound? He asked tersely, “Can you get a visual on the guy’s face?”

  “I’ll have to switch feeds. Stand by.”

  Gray’s screen wen
t black for several seconds. It flickered to life again, and he was momentarily disoriented by a gray-green blob. A pine tree.

  Barrett zeroed in on the evergreen tree in the middle of the screen, quartering it methodically from base to tip. In the third screen shot of foliage, Gray glimpsed a flash of color. A speck of neon yellow peeked out from below a branch. The person in question was high up in the tree, clinging to the trunk, mostly hidden in shadow and overhanging branches. But a light breeze ruffled the needles and a brief flash of a face came into view.

  “Can you capture that image?” Gray asked quickly.

  “Already on it.” The surveillance operative was working quickly as various pixilated images flashed across the monitor and disappeared as fast as they loaded. Finally, a slightly fuzzy image began to form on the screen. Tree branches, pine needles and then white skin. And then...red hair.

  Holy—

  Gray leaped up out of his chair, knocking it backward into the wall violently.

  “Sir? Agent Pierce?”

  Gray was out of the room and tore up the stairs without hearing anything else Barrett said.

  Chapter 12

  Gray alternately begged Sam to be safe and cursed her for her stupidity. What was she thinking, strolling right up to the fence of the Proctor compound by herself like that? She knew Wendall was paranoid and security-crazed. Did she want to get caught? Hell, she was going to blow the whole operation. He was going to kill her when he got his hands on her.

  Please, God, let him get to her first. He didn’t even want to contemplate what would happen to her if Proctor got a hold of her. Was the bastard sick enough to torture a prisoner? Gray recalled that unblinking, almost reptilian stare of Proctor’s and shuddered. All the guy would have to do was put Sam in a brightly lit room and take away her shades.

  Would she actually go blind or just be debilitated by blinding pain? He’d seen the strength of the numbing eye drops she sometimes used, and they were ample testament to just how painful bright light really was to her. Not that she ever complained about it. He’d been dragging her around all over the place during the day without giving it a second thought. Just how much had he hurt her?