Rogue (An American Ghost Thriller Book 1)

by J. B. Turner

  Forty-Four

  The sound of the young woman’s screaming was arousing Nathan Stone. He was watching the whole scene through the military binoculars. Transfixed by her helplessness. It stirred deep emotions. He felt exhilarated. And realized he was smiling broadly.

  Stone pulled on his backpack as he crouched behind the crevice, out of sight. The sound of her frantic voice in his earpiece cut right through him as she desperately tried to call the 999 dispatcher again. But he knew there was no connection. Not on that frequency.

  Time to play, Nathan.

  The phrase was echoing around in his mind.

  Stone doubled back for fifty yards and climbed over the outcrop above him. Then he headed over the ledge in the direction of the young woman.

  The more he thought of what was about to happen, the crazier he felt.

  He was back in the zone.

  It felt good. The air got colder as he climbed higher. The air bit into his skin. He felt alive. Invigorated. Vital.

  In his ear, the woman was muttering, frantic, moaning, desperate for Crichton to come back to life. For someone to help her.

  His earpiece crackled into life. “Nathan, five hundred yards as the crow flies, we estimate.”

  “Yeah, sounds about right. I just have to get over the next ridge and she’ll be in sight. Fifteen minutes. We still good?”

  “We’re very good. You’ve got a clean run at this. Crichton appears to be either unconscious or dead. He’s done.”

  “The girl . . . She next?”

  “She’s . . .”

  “She’s what?”

  “Fuck. We believe she’s got Crichton’s phone. She’s using it to try and call out.”

  “It’s jammed though, right?”

  “Yeah . . . but it’ll be US government-issue and might have some work-arounds in place.”

  “Got it.”

  “Let’s pick up the pace. And get this over with.”

  The line went dead.

  Forty-Five

  Jessica Friel was crouched by the senator’s body, weeping, head in her hands. She knew she needed to get Brad off the mountain. But the fact of the matter was they were on an isolated mountain range in goddamn northwest Scotland. A place only accessible to most people by a huge trek around the mountains. Or by boat. And she was stuck two thousand yards up on an overhang, with her lover, an American senator, not breathing.

  “Think, you fucker!”

  She racked her brain.

  Friel began to hit her head with the palm of her hand. “Think, for Chrissakes! Help!”

  She broke down and sobbed. She felt like she was losing her mind.

  Friel beat hard on his chest. She restarted mouth-to-mouth in between sobs. Cold lips. Purple.

  “No! Don’t do this to me!” She held his cold face in her hands. “Please, God, please.”

  She dialed 999 again and again, but still no goddamn signal.

  She stared at Brad’s phone. All the numerous apps.

  Her mind began to race. She flicked through the apps. And then she saw it.

  FireChat.

  She didn’t have that particular app on her phone, though she had heard about it. She remembered a conversation with her friend Amy, who said it was possible to send a message even without a signal or Wi-Fi connection. It worked by connecting to any cell phones in the area via Bluetooth.

  “Goddamn,” she said.

  Friel wondered exactly what she should do. She clicked on FireChat. She saw Brad’s chief of staff as one of the contacts. She took a photo of Brad lying motionless on the ledge. Then sent a message:

  SOS! Medical emergency! Brad not responding! Help! Stuck on mountain in Knoydart Peninsula, Scotland! No signal! PLEASE CALL 999 in UK. Can’t get through! Jessica.

  Friel began to shake after sending the message. She knelt down and touched his neck. It was cold. No pulse. She gave him the kiss of life again and again.

  Suddenly, she detected a pulse in his neck.

  She pounded hard on his chest. Again and again. Then again.

  “Do not die on me, do you hear me?”

  Forty-Six

  Brigadier Jack Sands was watching the multiple screens with interest. He took off the headset connecting him to Nathan Stone and leaned back in his seat. He checked Friel’s GPS and saw that Stone wasn’t far away. A matter of minutes.

  He wondered why the jamming technology emitting from Stone’s phone hadn’t jammed the signals. It should have created a dead zone for cell phone use via base stations in that tiny area of northwest Scotland. But Friel’s smart thinking had circumvented that.

  How the hell hadn’t they anticipated that possibility?

  He dialed the number for the operation’s chief technology officer, Matt Clamerson. “Matt, a message was sent, you see that?”

  A long sigh. “The jamming should’ve worked.”

  “But it didn’t. It fucking did not!”

  “Jack, you know FireChat isn’t connected to a centralized service. So we’ve got cell phones within a few kilometers theoretically running, the app acting as a node in a mesh network, passing messages, and this helped the message get through, unbelievably. That’s why it’s very, very difficult to block.”

  “Should we have foreseen this?”

  “Perhaps we should have . . . Fuck.”

  Sands gathered his thoughts. “What’s done is done. I need to find a solution. And fast.”

  “I’m trying to get into the recipient’s messaging system and delete the message.”

  “How long?”

  A pause. “We have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “The message has now been copied to every contact in Crichton’s team.”

  “By who?”

  “I’m checking the recipient’s cell phone settings as we speak.” A beat. “Yup. As I thought, anything sent from the senator’s phone to his chief of staff automatically goes to the whole team.”

  “Everyone knows?”

  “Yup. And two have opened it.”

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Sands began to pace the room. “Can we stop them sending those messages?”

  “Already done that.”

  “Good, so those two can’t make calls from those cell phones.”

  The sound of tapping down the line. “Precisely. And I’ve now deleted the unread messages too.”

  “So technically the two people could still contact police or the Feds or whoever.”

  “Yeah. But they’ll have to call from another cell or landline.”

  “Gimme a fucking break, someone.”

  Sands ended the call and stared up at the screens as Stone edged closer to his prey.

  Forty-Seven

  Nathan Stone figured he was less than five hundred yards away. But still out of sight. His earpiece crackled into life. “We estimate you are about six minutes away on that terrain,” the voice said.

  “Copy that.”

  “Bit of information. She just managed to send a message via FireChat calling in an emergency.”

  “You kidding me? Any response?”

  “None so far. But it’s just a matter of time till this is picked up.”

  “Are we a go?”

  “This is green. I repeat, we are green. Proceed to destination. And let’s complete the task.”

  Stone scaled a rocky outcrop and climbed over a ledge. Farther along the ridge, he finally caught sight of the young American woman. “I see her!”

  “Now listen, Nathan, you have the time. Scrambling a chopper to where you are we estimate, at the earliest, forty minutes. The target is down. Not moving. So you have a clear run. Get to it.”

  Stone climbed down a ridge. Closer and closer. His senses were switched to max. Then he stared down the well-trodden trail and saw in the distance the mistress crouched over the senator.

  Forty-Eight

  Out of her peripheral vision, Jessica Friel saw a tiny figure in the distance. She turned and stood up, flapping her arms frantically.


  “Help!” she screamed. “Please help!” She groaned as the hiker walked toward her, unaware of her predicament. Her desperation. “Please help me! Hurry!”

  The hiker was of a muscular build, carrying a huge backpack.

  “Hurry, please!” she shouted.

  The man began to jog toward them, as if realizing she was in trouble. He took off his sunglasses. “Jeez, what happened?”

  Friel felt relieved at the familiar accent. “Oh my God, thank you. An American. He’s my boss. He’s a senator. Please, we have to do something.”

  “Don’t panic, ma’am. It’s important not to panic.”

  “He’s collapsed. Heart attack, I think. I can’t contact 999 on my cell, but I managed to send a message to some folks back in the States.”

  The stranger took off his backpack and bent down beside Brad, pressing his neck. “There’s still a pulse. Real weak, though.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “Barely.”

  Friel felt euphoric. “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

  The man began hitting Crichton’s chest, like she had been doing.

  Friel looked around and saw a rocky outcrop about two hundred yards from the ledge they were on. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m gonna try and call for help again. See if I can get a better signal up there.”

  The man nodded. “Let me work on him. Quick!”

  Friel began to cry as she climbed higher up the rock face. She had the senator’s cell phone in her pocket. But as she climbed up, she wondered if she was doing the right thing leaving Brad with a total stranger, fighting for his life.

  Forty-Nine

  Nathan Stone waited for a couple of minutes until she was out of sight. He hadn’t felt a pulse at all. He opened the senator’s closed eyes and shone a penlight in them. Nothing. No pupil reaction. He checked for a pulse in the neck. And then in the wrist.

  Nothing.

  He let out a long sigh and whispered into his concealed microphone, “Arlington.” It was the code word alluding to the military cemetery. His earpiece crackled into life. “Copy that. You need to close this down real quick and get out of there.”

  Stone rifled through Crichton’s pockets. “There’s no cell in his pockets. I think target two has them both.”

  “They must be retrieved. And search for the flash drive too.”

  “Copy that.”

  Stone crouched by the body for a few moments. He leaned in close and pressed his face against the cold skin of the American senator. He closed his eyes, feeling the dead flesh on his. Like cold wax. Inert.

  It was then he saw something tucked inside the senator’s collar. A lanyard. He pulled it out and saw what was fixed to it: a tube of lip balm. He pulled off the top to reveal . . . a metal flash drive.

  Stone carefully took it off the senator’s neck. Then he slid it into a zipped side pocket of his backpack, which he closed immediately.

  He felt aroused.

  “Got what we were looking for.”

  “You do?”

  “I’ve got this.”

  Stone rose to his feet and stared up at the young woman climbing to the next peak. He would wait for her return. Then kill her.

  Fifty

  Jessica Friel was panting hard. The wind howled as she ascended the final peak. She was willing herself to stay focused. Her heart was pounding. Almost out of control. She felt sick. Insides knotted tight with tension.

  She desperately wanted to get a signal. Didn’t know if she would. But she had to try.

  Fuck.

  She felt tears rise up and spill down her cheeks. “Get it together, Jessica, do you hear me?” She willed herself to climb higher. She was scared. So scared. But she had to dig deep and get to the next peak.

  It was within sight.

  Slowly doubts began to crowd her thoughts. She wondered again if she should have stayed with Brad. She was caught in a cross fire of emotions.

  Shouldn’t she have asked the fellow hiker to go and get help? But that could’ve taken hours. They didn’t have hours.

  They were out of time.

  Friel gritted her teeth. “You can do this! Come on!”

  She climbed higher, her face at times pressed against the cold rock face of the ancient Scottish mountain. She began to think of death. Brad’s death. She could see it all before her.

  The more the questions piled up in her head, the crazier she felt. She plowed on, nearing the summit, blood dripping from her broken fingernails.

  She had never felt so alone.

  She had no one.

  She imagined her mother, angry and resentful about her illicit affair with a married senator. She’d been told by her mother that she would come to regret it. Now she was regretting it.

  But not in the way she, or anyone else, had imagined.

  This was worse. Far, far worse.

  This wasn’t in her plans.

  She had imagined Brad quietly divorcing his wife after a few years and then marrying her. But now here she was, scrambling about on a remote Scottish mountain range thousands of miles from home as Brad lay close to death . . . If he wasn’t dead already.

  Friel pushed those thoughts to one side as she drove herself on. Clawing at the rock face. She was calling on every ounce of strength she had to get to the top. She was close. She got onto a new trail that would take her to the summit.

  She moved on. Fear gnawed at her. She climbed and climbed. Then she felt her legs give way on the rocky scree. The pain shot through her right ankle like a hot knife. She groaned in agony. “Goddamn!” She limped on. Eventually, it was too sore.

  So she got down on her knees on the trail and began to claw her way up. Yard by goddamn yard. Her knees were on the hard rock and scree, which bit into her skin, as she felt herself going into shock.

  Her hands were shaking. Down below was a thousand-foot sheer drop.

  Eventually, she clambered to the top and sat there whimpering as the wind howled. She pulled out both cell phones. There was still no reception. No signal. She dialed 999 in the hope she might get lucky. But the line was dead.

  She closed her eyes for a few moments and began to cry.

  “Don’t give up!” she implored herself. “Try again, goddammit!”

  She tried again and waited. “Please . . . please. Please, someone. Anyone. Please answer. I’m begging you.”

  A terrible silence answered her.

  Then the phone crackled to life. “Operator,” a woman’s voice said, “which service do you require?”

  Friel began to shake with joy. “Ma’am, ambulance, paramedics . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that . . . It’s a bad line.”

  “Ambulance, paramedics, please. Emergency.”

  Suddenly the signal dropped out.

  “No! Goddamn!”

  She pulled out Brad’s phone and saw there was a message on the FireChat app. She opened it up.

  Help is on the way. US Embassy, London. Sit tight.

  Friel began to cry.

  She composed herself. She had to get it together.

  She wiped her eyes, a mixture of fear and relief washing over her.

  Would they get there in time?

  She turned and gingerly made her way back down the trail, feeling sick and slightly manic.

  She wondered how they would get Brad off the mountain. How long would they take?

  The more she thought about it, the more weepy she got.

  “Christ,” she said, blinking away the tears.

  She descended faster as the scree gave way to a firmer dirt trail. She began to remember the words of a prayer deep within her and buried since she was a child. A prayer she had learned as a girl at church. She felt the tears spilling down her face again as the wind whipped dust up into the air.

  Darkening skies in the distance rolled in across the sea.

  Friel slipped on her backside and began to slide down the
path. Her hiking boots slowed her. She traversed down to a lower ledge. Then she looked below and saw the stranger sitting beside Brad, head bowed.

  She scrambled down.

  “No, no,” she said, the words out before she could even stop herself. “Please, no!”

  Friel scrambled down the last fifty yards to the ledge where Brad was lying, not moving, as the stranger sat. She edged closer to Brad before she kneeled and wrapped her arms around him.

  He was cold.

  “No, this can’t be!” she wailed.

  The stranger sat in silence.

  Friel clasped Brad’s cold face in her hands and kissed his lifeless lips. She felt a terrible chasm open up inside her. A blackness. A nothingness. “Brad, please don’t leave me,” she said. She felt herself begin to sob and pulled his head to her breast. “Brad, please don’t do this. Please.”

  The stranger shifted on the ground and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He’s gone.”

  Friel held Brad tight, her face pressed to his cheek. She began to hum a favorite song of her mother’s. “Moonlight in Vermont.” She felt herself in free fall. As if someone had taken the wind out of her sails. She had been hollowed out. She was a shell.

  She dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, darling,” she whispered. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?” She ran her hand through his hair. His eyes were shut. Mouth open a fraction, as if it had frozen where he had gasped his last breath.

  She placed his head back down on the ground. She stroked his face. It was then she noticed something. Two buttons were undone on his shirt.

  Brad was a one-button guy if he wasn’t wearing a tie. She wondered if maybe she was mistaken.

  The more she thought about it, the more she knew that Brad would never unbutton more than one button on a casual shirt. He was virtually OCD about it.

  Her mind flashed back to him showing her the lanyard around his neck.

  She surreptitiously pulled back his collar and saw there was nothing there. No lip balm.

  Friel’s blood ran cold. She felt paralyzed. He had wanted her to have it. But it wasn’t there. He hadn’t been able to move when he had spoken those words. She hadn’t taken it from him. And then it began to dawn on her.