by Aaron Pogue
"Huh," Martin grunted. "Yeah. Here it is." She turned and saw the scene paused on Martin's handheld. Avery stood over Faye's bed. He had a rifle in his hands, raised up before him. Faye was awake now, half-risen and frozen in an instant of pure terror. The butt of the gun was coming down, smashing toward her head. "Is that the one?"
"Yeah." Katie nodded. She felt hollow. He resumed playback at regular speed, and she watched the blow land. Faye collapsed like a rag doll, and Avery pulled some cords from his pocket to bind her ankles and wrists. Then he heaved her up on his shoulder and headed out the door. Martin tried to follow them in HaRRE but as soon as Avery left the house he disappeared.
Martin sighed. "These state recorders don't do video."
"And he's a ghost, too, right?" Katie asked. "Not just her?" Martin nodded, and Katie nodded back. "Check on the rest. Wade Hartman. Ken Thomas."
It only took a moment for each, two little shakes of his head. "All gone," he said.
"All at the same time," she said. The car stopped. "All in different places. They've never done that before."
"What does it mean?" Martin asked.
"It means they're in control," she said. "More powerful than they've ever been. It means...." She trailed off.
Then she turned to Martin. "Can you find them? Can you find the signature of the SpectreShields or something?" She cast back in her memory to the details of Eddie's trial. "They use real-time error correction to squelch database updates across all bands."
He spread his hands, a look of helplessness in his eyes just like the one he'd worn when Reed asked him to look out for Katie. "I can try...."
She hesitated, torn between two paths. At last she shook her head. "No. Don't bother. Dimms has been working on it for three months, and he hasn't found a thing."
She checked her gun. The action was clean, and she was still only down three rounds. Martin's eyes were wide as saucers as he watched her working the weapon, and he shook his head. "Wait, Katie," he stammered. "I really think Reed—"
"You're right," she said. "Reed's right. But you saw that monster take Faye. He has every intention of killing her before dawn. And now they've got their SpectreShields broadcasting. These men have power. They have resources. They have know-how, and they're not afraid to live off the land. If we let them get away now...." Her eyes lingered on his, and he nodded.
He reached for his door. "Okay. Let's go."
She stopped him with a touch on his shoulder. "Not you," she said. He started to argue, but she cut him off. "I mean it, Martin. I need you, but not in the woods. You'd slow me down." She said that last more sternly than she felt it, and it did the job. He nodded.
"Good," she said. "I do need you, as a matter of fact." She looked out the window, at the dark weight of the woods all around, and in her mind she could already see the view from beyond the ridge more than a mile to the west. She already felt herself creeping down toward the bunker. "I think I have a plan."
That last was barely a whisper, but Martin caught it. He scooted closer, and said, "What do you have in mind?"
She glanced at him, but the trees drew her eyes back to the window right away. She was tensing up, building the nerve to open the door and go. "I'm going after them, Martin. I'm going to get Faye back. That would be a lot easier to do if I had a team of Ghost Targets agents out there with me."
"So, what?" Martin said. He sounded a little offended. "You want me to make sure Reed and Phillips know where you are?"
A smile tugged at her lips. A mile away to the west, she was already pulling the trigger. "Not exactly," she said. "It's going to be tricky."
She squared her shoulders and forced herself to turn her back on the woods. If this was going to work, she needed Martin to know exactly what she had in mind. She licked her lips, ready with an answer, but a tone from her headset stopped her short.
She held up a finger, waiting to hear who was connecting. Martin gasped in surprise, and it took her a heartbeat to understand why. Then her watch pricked the back of her wrist, one quick jab and four tiny pulses of pressure as Hippocrates delivered whatever aid it thought she needed. Relief and hope shot through her body along with the medications. She was connected again.
Then a cruel voice crushed the momentary joy. "Special Agent Katie Pratt."
"Avery," she said. Goosebumps rose on her skin. "Connect me." She held a finger to her lips, warning Martin to silence, and he immediately set to work typing controls into his handheld.
"You made the right choice, Agent Pratt," Avery said, drawing all her attention. "Oh my! Who is this? Rodrigo Vasquez?"
Martin caught her attention with a small motion and she nodded. His current fake ID. "Just someone who took pity on me on the road."
"Get rid of him," Avery said coolly. "Now. Send him back to the highway, or he'll become part of this, too."
She and Martin shared a long and bitter argument in two seconds of glaring. Then he growled, and she nodded. "He's going," she said. "Okay? Give him a moment. He's leaving."
She threw her door open. Her eyes fell on the backpack in the floorboard, and her stomach roiled in rejection. She grabbed it anyway.
Then she leaned in to get the shotgun and passed Martin her handgun. He shook his head furiously, but she ignored him. If Avery or one of his goons came for Martin, she didn't want him as helpless as Faye had been. She needed him.
"Go!" she said, loud and clear, then silently mouthed the words, "Get Reed." She slammed the door on his silent objection.
"He's leaving," she told Avery, knowing Martin was still eavesdropping. "It'll take him a few minutes to get outside the radius of your recorder trick, though."
"I'm watching like a hawk," Avery said, his voice dripping with menace. "As long as he leaves—"
"I understand." Katie's mind raced. She had to keep him on the line, had to find some way to communicate her plan with Martin, and there was no time.
"Let's talk about the plan," she said. Her voice sounded calm, under control. It surprised her. "Tell me about Eddie."
"Eddie?" Avery said, surprised. "I think you'll be far more interested to know what's become of your little benefactor." He drew out the silence, reveling in her imagined ignorance. With a profound sense of drama, he announced, "I have Faye Burke. She's at the bunker right now, and she's very scared."
Katie bit her lip, fighting for control, and forced a deep breath. "You won't get away with that. Eddie and I have a plan."
"You...you and Eddie?" He cackled. "Oh, you've been out in the woods too long, Katie. You're delusional."
She wasn't talking to him, though. "We talked about you," she said. "About you. Back when we were in DC. About things only you could do...."
"You foolish girl," Avery snapped, wresting back control of the conversation. "If Eddie convinced you he's on your side, it was a grand con. He's one of ours."
She had nothing left for Martin. If he couldn't figure it out from that bit, she'd have to settle for him bringing Reed and Phillips when they arrived. That would be hours yet. "You're being awfully forthcoming for someone on the public record," she said, just to keep him talking. Meanwhile she was operating her handheld by touch, looking for another path through the woods.
"Oh, it's not so public as you might think, Katie. Ken is a real genius with the code, you know, and once we got Eddie out of your clutches, he worked wonders."
He was gloating, and Katie left him to it. Everything he said would help Martin later. "We've got the full protection of SpectreShields now, but we can selectively enable database access for little things like private calls and taxi service."
"That's fancy," she said. "Maybe I should run back out to the highway and call myself a cab—"
"That is an option, Agent Pratt," Avery said, pretending magnanimity. "As a matter of fact, you're free to go. You're not under a SpectreShield at all anymore."
"Fascinating," Katie said, her voice deceptively flat and unimpressed. At the same time she frantically pulled her handheld
from her pocket and woke its screen. She stood in the road, unmoving while the recorders were still tracking her, tucked in the shadow of the trees along the shoulder. She wrestled with her options, but she already knew which one she would choose. She pulled up her own location details, and just to keep Avery talking she asked him, "Why the sudden change of heart?"
"Because we have no reason left to fear you," he said. "We have everything we need."
"You're wrong," she said. "I've been to the bunker. I've seen everything—"
He barked a laugh. "You stupid girl! You've seen one. We have hundreds, all across the country. We can abandon this one in an instant, leaving no trace of it for your people to discover. And once you're gone, we'll go, too. How's that?"
"That's not good enough," she said, giving him what he wanted. "I can't just leave Faye Burke—"
"Oh, but you can!" He crowed with delight. He'd been looking forward to this since his meeting right here with Wade and Jim last night. "It's entirely your choice. You can walk off down that road, call a cab, and zip right off to Washington, DC...or you can come into the woods and try to save the poor, disheveled widow."
She'd plotted six different routes through the woods to the bunker's location before she finally found one that didn't overlap with the route she'd used twice before. She had one, now, and she was navigating through it in HaRRE, hoping to avoid any ugly surprises along the way.
Avery needed an answer, though. "You bastard!" she shouted, playing it for all she was worth. "If you've got the SpectreShields you don't need her! Just let her go."
"Ah...very well," Avery said, as though convinced, but from his tone she could tell he'd intended this all along.
She heard a shuffling noise from the other end, a frantic rustle, and then she heard the bunker's heavy steel door creak open. She heard six quick footsteps, fading fast, as though someone had been shoved into a shambling run, and then she heard the door slam shut. The bolts scraped home in their slots. Beyond the door, ghastly faint, Faye screamed in terror.
"What have you done?" Katie asked, HaRRE completely forgotten. Her attention was all on Avery. "What have you done?"
"We've let her go, just like you asked. That scream was probably just her surprise at seeing what you'd done to Jim." He tutted, disapproving. "Then again, it might have been her realization how little time she has left. You see...she knows the rules."
For the first time, his threatening tone really cut through to Katie. At the same time, she saw Faye Burke pop into existence right on the border of the bunker's clearing and immediately received a connection request from the woman. She sounded frantic. "Katie Pratt!" When Katie didn't answer right away, she heard it again. "Katie!"
Katie forgot about giving herself away, forgot about her determination. Forgot about the woodland route on her handheld. She threw herself forward, tore into the head of the trail and ripped herself a path through the scrub. West. Toward Faye.
It was everything she could do to resist the connection request, but she needed more information from Avery. "What rules?" she demanded, and she could hear the smile on Avery's face when he responded.
"Off limits," he said lightly, as though he were reading from a list. "Keep away. Trespassers will be shot."
"You can't do that!" Katie batted a limb out of the way, and it tore a long gash in her left arm. The watch on her wrist jabbed her again. She ignored it all. "Let her go!"
"Oh, we'll be sporting," Avery said. "We're sporting men. She's got a fair head start."
He was loving it. Katie hated to play into his pride, but she needed everything she could get. "How long?" she growled.
"Plenty of time," Avery answered, and paused like he was checking a watch. "Almost ninety minutes, actually. Right until the recorders come back up."
She'd anticipated it, but it still hit her like a blow. "Hathor, connect me to Faye! Done!" She shouted the command, and it had just a moment to resolve the call before Avery hit the button.
Her headset beeped. Her handheld flashed its error message. Her watch showed red. She clenched her jaw, still running, and put the handheld away. It was useless now. For now. For ninety minutes. She raised the shotgun before her, using it to break a way, and focused on recalling the route she'd picked out.
Ninety minutes to get there undetected, or Faye became their third victim. And Katie, in all likelihood, their fourth. She checked both chambers on the shotgun and ran for all she was worth.
12. On the Hunt
Anger and adrenaline carried her half a mile, but caution won out when she recognized a stream bubbling across her path. A large round boulder rested half-submerged in the deepest part of a little pool, but the bit above water was still caked with mud and grasses torn free during its tumble.
She could see the path it had taken after Jim Dade shoved it downhill, and it had rolled for a long way. Flattened grasses and smashed saplings showed its course, and for a moment she considered following it straight back uphill. Then a sudden break in the gathering clouds let her see its route a little more clearly, and she spotted more than one sudden drop over ledges and cliffs ten feet or higher.
She sighed and turned to follow the stream instead. It wasn't on the route she'd chosen, but she knew it would get her where she wanted to go, and the rocky bed wouldn't show as many signs of her passage.
So she moved upstream, uphill, grinding her teeth whenever the stream's twisting course made her drift to the left or the right. She was in a hurry, but she couldn't risk getting caught. She had enemies all around her.
Avery was at the bunker, she knew that much. She doubted he'd feel confident leaving Eddie there alone, no matter what he'd said to her. In fact, her little ruse might have been enough to add a little wedge of suspicion between them. If so, all the better.
That still left Ken, though, whose job was clearly done. The man was a noted hunter—she knew that from his identity profile—and then there was Wade, too. She didn't know whom to fear more. Ken was a prizewinning marksman, but shooting at human targets was another matter altogether. Wade hadn't even hesitated. He'd gunned down two of his neighbors with ruthless cruelty, and now he was looking for Katie.
Well...Katie and Faye. That was a puzzle, and enough of one that it slowed her even further. What was Avery's game? Why would he let Faye go? Why would he offer Katie the option of leaving? She knew these men were all dedicated hunters, but she just couldn't believe Avery was treating this as a matter of sport.
That was it. If he'd been a simple psychopath, this would make sense. Maybe Wade was, but Wade was letting Avery call the shots, and Avery was after something bigger. Something worth risking the fury of the federal Ghost Targets task force. Something worth burying how many millions of dollars beneath a bit of woodland miles from civilization.
Velez was involved. How had Martin put it? He'd been "cultivating" these groups for a long time. She remembered talking with Eddie about privacy, back at the office. She stopped, still near the stream, and slipped into a hollow created when the stream had dropped a sinkhole many years ago. Time had worn it smooth, so now it was a depression in the ground, shielded by a short overhang of earth and stone.
It gave her a place to hide as long as she was willing to be idle. Time was precious here, but there were too many questions. It wouldn't do her any good to sprint to the bunker with anything less than a brilliant plan, even if Martin did figure out his part.
Huddled in the shadow of the earth, tight against the cold wall, she shivered. Her eyes fell closed, and she snapped them open in sudden alarm, half a heartbeat away from drifting off. Even with her heart hammering, she was on the verge of falling asleep on her feet. If she did that, she was dead. Faye, too, for that matter. As soon as the recorders came up.
She checked her watch. 4:48. Thirty minutes to hike halfway to the ledge. She was getting faster. Another day or two of this, and she'd be up to jogging speed. It helped that she kept ending up on one or two different paths. It was stupid—dangerous, if h
er enemies had been paying any attention at all—but then, the terrain kept pushing her back toward the streams.
A sound arrested that train of thought, a rustle in the branches somewhere above and behind her. She twisted and turned, trying to peek in the right direction without revealing anything below her eyelashes, but she couldn't see a thing in the darkness.
She held her breath, straining to hear, and then a burst of noise barely twenty feet away startled her so much she jumped. She fell backward, caught herself with one hand in the stream, and then hurled herself back against the deeper shadow of the wall.
It wasn't necessary. As soon as she stopped jumping she placed the sound. A pheasant, or a grouse, or some sort of game bird. Maybe even an owl. Something big and heavy anyway, exploding out from its perch in the branches and beating by just over her head.
The letdown was almost as hard on her system as the shock had been, her strength washing away along with the fear. She was shaking, now—weary and weak when she needed to be sharp and strong. Four forty-eight, and the new cloud cover spread thick and far. It was as dark right now as she could remember it being all night. She wouldn't be able to see a hunter coming for her from more than three or four paces away, unless they were kind enough to shine a flashlight ahead of them like poor stupid Jim had done.
They wouldn't be searching for her though. That suddenly came clear to her. They really weren't even looking for her. Not until six, when the recorders came back on. After all, they couldn't see any better in the dark than she could. They were waiting, patiently, secure in their position of power.
And that meant she needed to be on the move. She checked her watch. Four fifty now. She had an hour left to get wherever she was going to get.
On her first step away from the ledge she stumbled, and on her second she stuck her left foot ankle-deep in the stream. She kept on, though. Across the creek and along its other bank, with the handheld still stowed in her pocket. She moved by memory and by touch, going slowly, half-stooped with hands constantly searching ahead of her, and her ears always straining.
