by CJ Lyons
“I told you they had money and resources,” he said. “You need to leave me and get the hell out of here. I can’t be responsible—”
“It’s all or none, Cavanaugh. You’ll never make it alone.”
“It’s not about me. It’s about getting the job done. You can do that. Right now, I can’t.” He gestured to his arm in the sling. “I’ll create a diversion, get them off your back.”
“Don’t even waste your breath trying,” she said, hoisting her pack onto her shoulders and turning her back on him. “I will not leave you here to die.”
“Vinnie, I’m not Michael. I can take care of myself.”
They both knew it was a shot in the dark, but it hit home. She shook her head, started down the trail. She’d made a solemn vow.
Besides, she had a sinking feeling that his confidence in her was misplaced. He knew how these men thought, how they planned. Without Lucky, she would most likely blunder right into a trap.
“Face it, Cavanaugh,” she told him, “we need each other.”
He followed after her, a frown on his face. “Yeah, yeah, all or none. I heard you.”
Lucky was beginning to think that Vinnie was right about their attraction being lust and not love. Was it love when all you could think about was throttling the woman in front of you? When you wanted to pepper the air with curses about her pig-headedness?
He skidded into a snow pile, wet slush slipping down his boot top and swore. She certainly seemed to think he wasn’t going to make it off this godforsaken mountain alive. Was that the premonition she’d had earlier when they first met?
Didn’t matter, he was a scientist, he knew better than to believe in luck or fate or destiny. Give him nice, predictable chemical reactions any day of the week.
It was nuts to even fantasize about getting involved with a woman like her, especially not now when he had a job to do.
He grunted, used the walking stick to leverage his way over a fallen tree trunk, hating the way she moved so effortlessly through the forest. She was right about one thing—they did have a better chance at success working together than going their separate ways.
He walked a bit farther before realizing that, without saying a word, Vinnie had somehow convinced him to come around to her way of thinking. Maybe there were witches in these woods after all.
If so, he wished she’d use some magic to get them out of here, because he knew something she didn’t.
He knew it was The Preacher himself on that helicopter. Which meant their chances of getting out of this alive had just plummeted.
CHAPTER 15
“This is getting us nowhere!” Chase Westin barged into Rose’s office without knocking, interrupting her perusal of the latest situation reports from the NSA monitoring stations.
She shot him a glare that halted him in his tracks. He still wore his tuxedo, although the suspenders were now hanging around his hips and someone, probably KC, had gotten at least half the shirt studs in place. His hair was rumpled and his cheeks darkened with stubble.
“I’m going up there,” he announced in an unapologetic tone.
“Where?” she asked.
“What do you mean where? To find Lucky!”
Rose came around her desk, slid a large topographic map out from under the stack of NSA updates and spread it out before him. She pointed to the former location of the Liberty Hunt Club.
“Here’s where they found Tillburn’s body—at least they think his was one of the ones they pulled from the ashes. You have training in arson investigation that I don’t know about?”
He frowned, ignored her question. They both knew the answer. Chase was a field guy, give him men to train and lead, an objective to accomplish, and he’d get the job done.
He’d been a NCO, never went to college—a fact that didn’t bother Rose in the slightest. She had plenty of people with high IQ’s and multiple initials after their names. Her greater need was for men and women with common sense, field smarts, people skills and leadership qualities—all of which Chase had in spades.
What he didn’t have was patience, especially when someone he cared about was in danger.
“I’ll start here, where they found Lucky’s car,” he said, jabbing a finger at the map.
Rose nodded as if seriously considering his proposal. “Right. There’s nothing but forest in any direction for miles. Last I heard from the State Police on scene and the National Weather Service, it’s snowing with white out conditions. They’re estimating accumulations of almost half a foot an hour up there.”
“All the more reason to find him. We know he’s injured, if he’s wandering around those mountains—” his voice trailed off as he saw her point.
“By the time you made it there, if the roads are still passable, it would be too late anyway. Chase, we both know you’re more valuable to me and Lucky here. At least until the weather breaks.”
He hung his head like a chastised schoolboy, his hands tugging at his suspenders.
“What did you and Hollywood find out about that new yellow flag Billy added in Atlanta?” she asked.
“Hollywood thinks it’s a waste of time. Some mad scientist type from the CDC has been clogging APD and the local FBI field office with complaints. There’s a man following her, someone trying to kill her, someone spying on her—every time it’s a different story, different description of a possible suspect. Oh yeah, the FBI guys found out that she’s been under the care of a shrink the last year or so, also recently filed bankruptcy and accused her ex-boyfriend of identity theft.”
“They pursuing the ex?” Rose asked.
“They can’t even prove he ever existed. I think she’s a nutjob—so does Hollywood. He wants to close it, move on to something more productive.” Like finding Lucky, he didn’t have to add.
Rose frowned. Something didn’t feel right about this. “Where’s this scientist work?”
“CDC. That’s how we got to hear about it. APD and the FBI both passed it onto Homeland Security before they closed their cases, in case she became a liability. But the CDC says her work isn’t that sensitive, although it is cutting edge. They think she’s a genius, nuts, but a genius. They’re revoking her security until they decide a safe place to put her to work.”
“So you and Hollywood think she cracked under stress?”
“Something like that. His take was: uptight broad with an uptight job, trying to get attention from the men in blue since no one else will give her any.”
She bristled at that. Hollywood—which he preferred over his real name of Dwight David Harriman—was former Navy, inclined to cynicism, but sometimes he didn’t bother to look past the surface when it came to women. Especially single women.
“Tell Hollywood to stick with it. I want to know everything about this woman by the time we meet again at noon. Tell him I said everything—if he doesn’t know her brand of shampoo, I’m giving him a one way ticket to Atlanta.”
“C’mon, Rose, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“You might, but Hollywood’s on this until I say otherwise. EZ should have those satellites re-tasked, why don’t you work with him on the hunt for Lucky?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Rose stared out the open door to her office long after Chase vanished from sight. Something nagged at her about this “routine” assignment—she hadn’t assigned Hollywood to it frivolously.
She turned her gaze to her map of the world. The blossoming of red pins symbolizing urgent alerts strained to pull her attention away from the even larger number of orange and yellow ones.
Maybe that was what they were meant to do. Like the street magicians who juggled knives and while you waited for them to impale themselves, they picked your pocket.
CHAPTER 16
Lucky felt as if he were stumbling through a shadow world. Part of it was the violet on violet twilight of the sunrise reflecting from the snow-covered ground, giving it the same leaden appearance as the sky above. Every step he took, he wondered i
f it was going to be his last. With every breath he paused, expecting a bullet to tear through him.
This was more than nerves. This was good old fashioned, gut-wrenching terror.
Lucky had every right to be afraid—The Preacher was here in person, searching for him.
Memories of that night last month, that awful night he’d tried so hard to permanently erase from his soul, came flooding back. When he swallowed, he tasted blood. The raucous, frantic calls of the birds above became his own screams.
He almost fell over Vinnie, he’d been so preoccupied with overcoming the panic that had snuck up and blindsided him.
It had taken all his energy to stay on the trail, knowing that wherever he went, most likely The Preacher would be there waiting for him. Ready to pick up where they had left off last month.
“Hear that?” Vinnie asked, her face upturned.
Lucky could barely hear anything over the blood rushing to his head. “What?” he asked, surprised that his voice sounded normal.
“Birds, they’re looking for shelter. Wind’s shifted.” She looked past the narrow line of trees that separated them from the gorge and frowned. “We have to hurry. That storm’s moving in faster than I thought.”
Lucky clenched his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering. He could have told her that.
The last part of the climb to the bridge was a scramble up and over some boulders. A fun challenge in nice weather suddenly became a nightmare of ice-slicked rock and frozen fingers.
He was grateful for the walking stick he used to brace himself as he moved from one handhold to the next, prided himself that he only needed Vinnie’s assistance twice to make it to the top.
Whoa, boy, they were high up. He hauled himself over the last rock and didn’t stand up, just lay there panting, a whole lot of nothing between him and the next stop down.
The last ten minutes had been filled with almost slips and falls—any of which could have been the end of Mrs. Cavanaugh’s baby boy.
Lucky rolled over onto his back and laughed as snow drifted down, quickly coating his face in a thin blanket. Jeez, what an idiot he was! Getting all hot and bothered about the freaking Preacher!
He’d just climbed a mountain in the snow with one arm, for chrissakes. If this mountain didn’t kill him, no way he was going to let The Preacher have the honors. He’d beaten the bastard once, he could do it again.
“What’s so funny?” Vinnie asked as she squatted beside him and offered her water bottle.
Lucky struggled to sit up, didn’t mind her helping hand now. “Nothing,” he said after taking a deep drink. He used the walking stick to stand up and spread his arms wide. “Nothing’s wrong!” he shouted. “I’m the king of the world!”
The wind ate his words and threw them back in his face with a handful of sleet. Vinnie looked at him like he was crazy, then handed him her binoculars.
“Hate to rain on your coronation parade,” she said, pointing him so that he was looking back down the trail, “but we’ve got company.”
Three uninvited guests, to be exact. Lucky focused the glasses. Two of the men wore hunting clothes and had rifles slung over their shoulders, the third he recognized from the meeting yesterday. Whitney, the man who’d ordered Tillburn’s murder.
He lowered the binoculars and turned back to Vinnie. She had climbed about ten yards up the trail and down to the edge of the gorge. Then he saw the bridge.
No, couldn’t be, there had to be another, a real bridge somewhere, he thought as she brazenly strode out onto the flimsy cable that made up the bottom of the three-line bridge.
He watched in horror as she pushed her hands out against the two horizontal cables that acted as handrails. She stretched them as far apart as she could, seemed totally ignorant of the fact that all that separated her and the chasm below was the bottom cable and a few thinner vertical cables scattered every three feet or so connecting the top cables with the bottom one.
Who did she think he was, Tarzan?
The bridge shook in the wind gusting down the gorge. The opposite side was maybe a hundred feet away, but a hundred feet suspended over a bottomless drop as far as Lucky could see.
His stomach lurched, and he pulled his gaze back up to the mountain across the gorge. Snow-covered boulders and to one side a large waterfall, still running despite the freezing temperatures. Clouds obscured the top of the waterfall.
So that was Shangri-La. Just had to make it across, call in the cavalry, and everything would be okeydokey.
Lucky blew out his breath. Right. Piece of cake.
She gestured for him to join her, and he carefully made his way across the ice-slicked rocks down to where she waited.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he shouted to be heard above the wind.
“Built by the CCC during the Depression,” she told him as she strapped a length of climbing rope around his waist, then around hers. “Outlasted every other bridge ever put up across this gorge—including the fancy one the Forest Service built three years ago.”
As she spoke she was slowly pushing him toward the start of the bridge. “You’re not afraid of heights are you?”
If she only knew. But no way Lucky was going to tell her the truth, they both knew this was the only way. And time was running short. Whitney and his buddies would be here soon.
“Of course not,” he said, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike him for lying.
“Good. Here’s how it’s gonna work. You balance the walking stick so it rests on the guide wires,” she demonstrated, “and put your weight in the center.”
He did as she said, watching with apprehension as his weight pushed the two ropes farther and farther apart. But thanks to the support lines strung between the guide wires and the bottom cable, it didn’t stretch farther than about three feet. The walking stick had a few inches to spare on either side.
“Just put one foot in front of the other and you’ll do fine,” she assured him, edging him forward. “I’ll be right behind you, so if you feel like you’re slipping, stop and hold still, I’ll get you.” She clicked a carabineer to the guide rope, tethering the two of them and the bridge together.
Lucky had a sudden vision of turning into a pendulum swinging below the bridge, dependent on Vinnie to pull him to safety. His stomach revolted. Was not going to happen, he told himself as he took a few deep breaths and stepped out onto the bridge.
He took one shuffling step after the other, sliding the walking stick along with him. Vinnie kept up a constant stream of encouraging conversation, distracting him from the view beneath his feet and before he knew it they were halfway across. The lines weren’t quite so taut here and the wind was fiercer, threatening to topple them both off the bridge.
Lucky’s foot slipped and he almost fell, but Vinnie grabbed his rope and pulled him back. His face was frozen solid, and he could see icicles forming on the guide wires. The two cables the walking stick rested on kept moving farther and farther apart, almost but not quite moving past the reach of the stick.
One foot in front of the other, the mantra filled his mind, blocking out the wind, the cold, everything except the sight of one foot sliding forward and the other following.
He was almost to the other side when he felt something whiz past him and saw sparks as a bullet impacted on the boulders beyond. Lucky froze, looked back over his shoulder.
Whitney and his two friends were at the start of the bridge, aiming at them. No, not at him—at Vinnie. She might as well have a target painted on her back, standing between Lucky and the snipers.
“Cut me free!” he shouted. “I can cover you from those rocks.”
For once she didn’t argue, but held onto the bridge support with one hand while she unclipped the rope that bound them together.
Lucky pushed forward the few remaining steps to the safety of solid ground and dropped the walking stick, drawing his Glock. He took cover behind the rocks but before he could aim the semi-automatic, several shots rang out.
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br /> He watched in horror as one of them sliced through the upper left hand cable, leaving Vinnie tottering, scrambling for a handhold as the bridge swung wildly under her weight.
He returned fire but his first two shots missed. Nine left. He wiped his face clear of snow and took careful aim, fired again. One of the hunters stumbled and fell, his rifle tumbling into the gorge. Whitney had scrambled down and was on the bridge, crossing it as effortlessly as a set of monkey bars, his weight making the damaged structure swing even more wildly, trapping Vinnie before she could gain the safety of solid ground.
She regained her balance, hanging onto the remaining guide wire and leaning into it as if she were keeling out from a catamaran, the cable behind her. Still tethered by her climbing rope, as long as it held, she was safe from falling. She began to inch forward once more.
Another shot rang out, snapping one of the thinner support wires this time, leaving a large gap between her and the end of the bridge.
Lucky swore as he tried to spot the second sniper. Shots continued to ring out, several struck close enough to Vinnie to strike sparks from the steel cables. The cables didn’t break but Vinnie was hopelessly pinned down, Whitney closing in on her fast.
Lucky spotted his man in the shadow of the boulder at the base of the bridge. He squeezed off two more rounds. The sniper returned fire, the bullet splintering the rock. Lucky felt his cheek begin to burn, but kept firing.
Finally, he was rewarded. The sniper twisted and then fell, plummeting over the side of the gorge. The wind shredded the man’s unholy scream, making Lucky’s flesh crawl.
He turned to aim at Whitney, but The Preacher’s man had gotten too close to Vinnie, they were now side by side on the gyrating bridge. Whitney had his gun pointed at her.
“Come on out!” he shouted to Lucky. “Now, or she’s a dead woman!”
A gust of wind forced Whitney to lower his gun hand as he fumbled for a handhold on the cable. Vinnie took advantage of Whitney’s momentary distraction and rushed to make it the rest of the way off the bridge.
