Night threatened in black and blue shadows at the edge of the sky she could no longer see. Too many tall, bushy trees obstructed her view. Pines, every last one of them. She used to love the lacy, elegant Noble pines when decorated with snow and glistening icicles the way these were. Pines always reminded her of tinsel and Christmas, one of the few good holidays left in the world. Not anymore. These Nutcracker Suite bad boys just might be the death of her, which could be a good thing in the long run. Freezing to death seemed a better way to go than a double tap to the cranium, her brains spilled out for the wildlife to sample. An Eden buffet. Hmmm.
She blew out a deep breath of frosty air and staggered on. Even gliding over snow-covered ground, her load was a heavy one. Ten feet to go. Then five. Then I can rest and maybe this headache will stop.
At last Eden dropped to her knees, sure she’d done the best she could. This was the only bare patch of earth within dragging distance, sheltered beneath the fanlike branches of a densely packed stand of evergreens. It almost seemed serene, this spot. Serene and surreal. A little reverent. Sacred even. But mostly—diggable, if that was even a word.
Yes. It would do. A single shaft of the weak winter sunlight fell across her snow-dusted boots. A brave little bird flitted in the chilly branches overhead, but it didn’t sing. Didn’t even chirp. What the heck did birds have to sing about in the frozen north?
She took a moment to catch her breath, but ended the break before her limbs had the chance to seize from exhaustion or her backside from the cold. This next chore would be harder. She still had to bury the body.
Chapter Two
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” she promised through chattering teeth.
Eden brushed the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead, panting short bursts of over-heated air out while she sucked in the cold. Her lungs hurt, but Charlie Sweets was finally planted, his grave in the frozen ground shallow, but good enough. The collapsible shovel she’d found in the plane wasn’t nearly enough help, but after enough effort and swearing, it had worked.
She paused, hating to leave Charlie behind and alone in the dark. Yes, he was dead, but he’d been a friendly port in a sea of measured indifference and calculated cruelty. To make it up to the congenial pilot of the Cessna 185, she’d scrounged the nearby area for downed branches and rocks, both difficult to locate in the snow and the waning light of what would be a frigid night. He now lay beneath layers of fragrant pine—lots of them, if you counted the trees over his head.
Charlie Sweets might have expired the moment he’d crash-landed, but he’d skillfully guided the wingless bird until his final breath. The Cessna had suffered nose damage and loss of both wings when it plowed through the forest, but somehow, its cabin had maintained structural integrity. Eden worried for him now. He deserved more than a shoddy burial, or worse, to be left in the open for animals.
Shivering, she scrubbed her palms up and down her biceps, her gaze fastened to the shallow grave. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Ha. Funny, Eden. Go find your jacket. Hypothermia’s setting in. You’re losing your mind.
She retraced her tracks and shuddered into her new best bud, Ralph Lauren, her fingers so stiff she could barely work the zipper. When it finally slid into place under her chin, she flipped her collar up and ducked into the chilly goose down. The first tentacles of warmth invaded her lightly frosted skin, then sunk deeper into her stiff muscles. Ralph Lauren had created a comfy jacket, one she wished extended over her denim-encased legs more than it did.
Darkness fell silently and completely. She’d barely reached the plane wreckage when the last glimmer of light slipped into shadow. If there were stars in the sky, she couldn’t see them. She didn’t look. Climbing inside the plane, she felt in the dark for the door latch and hurriedly locked herself in.
The night promised to be long, dark, and miserable. Trembling, she retrieved a penlight flashlight from her inside jacket pocket to view her new digs. The LED beam cast a stark light over her slim chance of survival. At take-off, she’d shared her getaway plane with a stack of boxes secured to the floor with nets and bungee cords. A rolled up sleeping bag had been stashed behind her chair. Various ropes. A fire extinguisher on the wall. An ice chest beside her seat.
Everything lay in a tumbled mess now, most of it forced forward into the cockpit from the crash. Some boxes had broken apart. An ice pick from out of nowhere had joined the mess. A fishing pole. A couple of blankets. Charlie’s red-and-black checkered hat. Broken glass from which window, Eden didn’t know. The mangled wreck would keep her safe from wildlife and snow, but not the cold.
She dragged the sleeping bag to her seat, unzipped it, and folded herself and Ralph Lauren inside before she zipped it again. A drink would’ve been nice, but the bottle of water she’d brought from Anchorage was nowhere in sight. Probably frozen anyway. Food would have to wait, too. She needed warmth more than anything else, so she pulled the sleeping bag tighter and wondered where her single piece of luggage had gone. Her backpack. She needed her lip balm. Her Vicks. A wet wipe wouldn’t hurt, either.
But there was nothing she needed badly enough to freeze for. Snuggling into her cover, she crossed her arms over her chilled breasts and faced the music. Never in a gazillion years did I think the plane would crash in the middle of all these trees. Where no one will ever—EVER—find me. Why me? Why now?
She knew darned well why.
Simple. Eden was not only one of the most elite of the elite within the covert ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but she’d been born with a genetic birth defect unlike any other. It was both a blessing and a curse. Second sight. Just like her mother’s.
Since she’d gone to work for the FBI, neurologists all over the world had examined her, studied her, tested her, but in the end they were mystified as to how her gift worked. They couldn’t explain her uncanny talent any more than her mother had been able to, except that it did work. Eden could sense bad things before they happened—sometimes.
Like the way Charlie’s right ventricle had spasmed before the crash, an extraordinarily odd coincidence given that he looked athletically fit.
Like the way the Cessna had skimmed the treetops for five long minutes before it pitched forward, another odd coincidence considering the remote location she now found herself lost in.
An involuntary shudder skittered up her spine at the thought of Mika Koenig and Arthur Shields. They used to be nice guys, but were now ruthless killing machines. Hearts colder than the frozen north. Black holes where their eyes used to be.
Even huddled in the back seat of the broken Cessna like she was, Eden could accurately gauge the distance and speed at which her assassins tracked her. If she focused and let her second sight reach out to them, she could literally read them like a book, a book about mindless zombies with two identical thoughts on their scary minds: Find her. Kill her.
They’d chosen a rocky outcropping to the southwest for their landing zone. No doubt a stealth helicopter, a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, rested there still, ready to lift off the moment her heart ceased beating. Yes, she, FBI Special Agent, Eden Stark, Quantico’s resident psychic and overly protected asset, had been set up, and her poor dead pilot with her.
Casey’s motherly wisdom came back to Eden. Keep your opinions to yourself and your mouth shut. Once people know you have this gift, you’ll never have a moment’s peace. Conceal it. Control it. Be very careful of the friends you choose.
“Yes, Mom,” she whispered to the frozen air.
She’d been an obedient child and had spent most of her twenty-six years keeping her talent hidden. She’d never had girlfriends, and after Stan, she’d needed no boyfriends. Eden simply excelled at reading people, at seeing hidden agendas and deceits below the lying surface. It wasn’t hard. She was also good at psychological testing. Her life hadn’t been the same since.
The FBI had her hunting terrorists worldwide. Saving their victims. Their marks. She didn’t need to be
in the same vicinity, much less the same room, as the evil men and women she hunted in order to do her job. She just had to study her target to get a feel for him or her, and her uncanny brain did the rest.
Do you believe that dribble about human beings only utilizing ten percent of their brains? Guess again. A brain’s prime directive was to work non-stop every millisecond of a person’s life to ensure that person’s survival—kind of like a refrigerator, only better. Give your brain a change of scenery, and it would work harder. Give it a good night’s sleep, and it would come up with impossible possibilities. Eden learned early how to task her gray matter with supposedly unsolvable problems like finding lost souls. Missing children. Hidden bodies. Evil men.
Sometimes, a vision burst to the front of her mind, striving for attention in the way of a nagging child. She’d see her victim’s face, his or her mouth open in a scream, eyes wild and terrorized or squeezed tight against his or her pain. But most times, warnings came like a movie trailer with just enough vague information to whet her need to know more. Often, they came like a mumbled, incoherent whisper in the back of her mind. A shiver. Goose bumps. One had come to her two and a half years ago with actual words. God, just let me die...
She still thought about that poor man, but all she knew was his name. Ky. And sometimes late at night, she wondered, why him? Where was he now? She was fairly certain he’d survived. Did he ever think about her? Probably not.
Eden drew in a deep sigh. Usually, she’d delegate the psychic warnings to her extraordinary brain and let it do what it did best. Profile. Search. Reach out. Touch that victim with some kind of psychic message. At which time, she’d turn her findings over to her boss, FBI Special Agent Matt Hartigen. He took it from there, because he commanded the resources for assault, recovery, and extraction. He also commanded respect. People jumped when he spoke.
That was what she probably should’ve done with Ky, but she hadn’t. Not once did she bring Matt into the loop—she’d just stayed with Ky until the end. Until she knew he was safe and rescued. Until those other soldiers came back for him and took him to Camp Eggers. Then the connection broke and that was that. Still, she wondered.
Most of the Bureau didn’t know about her. The FBI kept Eden and her extraordinary talent a thing of legend and rumor in the deepest, blackest backrooms of their clandestine world. No one knew their finest sometimes relied on what others would sarcastically term a nut job. Psychics were frauds and scammers, weren’t they?
She chuckled into her sleeve at the world’s opinion. Eden knew better. She’d accurately predicted and prevented the U. S. embassy bombing in Tokyo, Japan, just months earlier. The State Department borrowed her services when masked gunmen had kidnapped the Secretary of State, Royce Hammond, in broad daylight, off a street in Kazakhstan. Locating him had taken longer than she’d expected, but the nation’s best did arrive in time, and they were able to prevent his beheading. The esteemed Secretary Hammond never knew he’d been given a second chance to live a long life with his wife of twenty years, all because of a nut job. He had no need to know.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation considered her one of their prime assets. They’d secretively deployed her to various U. S. embassies around the world when trouble struck. She did her thing, saved what or whom others couldn’t, then went home until her skills were needed again. So why was she in the middle of Canada fighting to survive when she had the power to keep Americans safe abroad? Simple. Because she, Special Agent, Eden Stark, was now a target.
Enter Dr. Abraham Zaroyin, the neurosurgeon who used to be in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency’s research and development. The whack job who thought he had the right to twist human nature through the experimental use of cybernetics. The madman whose defense plan for the nation included chipping every able-bodied sailor, airman, soldier, and marine with a device in their brains to subdue the primal instinct of fight or flight, and replace it with enhanced logic. In effect, he planned to turn America’s active-duty military into programmable minions.
His argument stressed there would be no more friendly-fire mishaps, no more fog of battle blunders. War could be controlled at a remote site by someone smarter than the military experts on the ground, someone not caught up in the heat of battle. Like politicians. Or the president.
The scary part of the nightmare was that Zaroyin had strong congressional backing. And a lot of nerve. She’d been briefing Matt on her latest successful vision concerning the German ambassador’s fifteen-year-old son who’d gone missing months earlier during spring break. She’d finally located him. In Chile. On a beach. The spoiled little shit.
Matt had just finished saying he didn’t want her to waste any more talent or time on Doogie Hauser. In walked the madman. The second Eden had looked at Zaroyin, her blood had run cold. She’d seen past his friendly, lying eyes to the ruthless scheming predator beneath. He didn’t want national security. He wanted power, and unlimited funding to accomplish his goal to get that power. He was there to enlist the FBI’s support in convincing the CIA, but most of all, he was there because he needed her, Eden Stark, to make his plan work. He’d needed to meet her, face-to-face. She didn’t understand why, only saw the evil intent darkening the genius of his brilliant mind.
She’d shared her suspicions with Matt. Sure enough, after a little FBI covert work, Matt had uncovered Zaroyin’s insidious plan to build an army of drone soldiers. Matt had briefed his boss, Zachary Strong, the national director of the Bureau. He’d met with the CIA. Instead of granting Zaroyin additional funding for his bizarre plan, the CIA cut what funding they’d already budgeted to him and escorted him off Quantico.
And for a month, Eden had thought herself safe. She went to work and gave her country her best—until Matt’s heart gave way in the middle of a Homeland Security briefing at the White House. Right ventricle. Her worst fears had come true. Zaroyin had already created his programmable soldiers. Eden had run for her life.
The question at the back of her mind was always the same. Who had outed her to the mad doctor in the first place? Who told him she had significant and reliable psychic skills? It wasn’t common knowledge. Less than a handful of the Bureau’s finest knew: Director Strong, Matt, and Dr. Penn, her physician.
When she hadn’t been able to answer her own question, she locked her artfully decorated office at D.C. headquarters and disappeared. The FBI field office across country in San Francisco had seemed safest, until Zaroyin tracked her there. Then she’d run for the field office in Hawaii. No safety there, either. He’d arrived in less than a week. Next, she’d opted for Anchorage, Alaska, not wanting to flee the borders of her homeland for the likes of a madman. She knew three of the trusted agents in Anchorage. She should’ve been safe with them, right?
Wrong again. Her second sight had failed her, and another good friend in the Anchorage field office had died of a mysterious heart attack. Worse, Zaroyin had hit town in less than forty-eight hours. Eden literally came unglued when she caught sight of him stepping off the Alaskan Air Jetway. Three-piece brown suit. Black tie. Dressed for success and ready to conquer the world instead of hunting or fishing like the other passengers.
She’d been waiting for him, stalking the airport terminal. Backed into a corner, she knew then that she needed help. If anyone could save her, it had to be the director of the Bureau, right? Eden had called Director Strong, but he’d been out of his office. Didn’t it figure? She’d left a hurried message on his voicemail and hopped a random ride with the nearest bush pilot she could find, Charlie Sweets. Lied. Told him her abusive ex-husband was after her, that she needed to disappear in order to survive, which was kind of true.
Charlie’d said climb aboard; he could make it happen. He knew a place. Was already on his way east to Greenland with supplies for some trophy fishermen. No one would ever find her there. Now there she was, alone in the middle of nowhere with two cyborg-type killer FBI agents out of a weird sci-fi movie on her trail.
“Let ’em co
me,” she growled to the dark. Let ’em find out the hard way. Eden Stark was no simpering female, crying for some white knight to drop out of the sky and rescue her. Heck, no. She might’ve run before, but she had skills, and she meant to use every last one of her FBI talents to survive. Besides her inherently peculiar and sometimes spooky mental prowess, she’d been trained by the country’s elite anti-terrorist team. Not many could best the Bureau when it came to training its agents. To shoot. To kill. To survive.
Okay, so it was mostly target practice at the indoor range at Quantico, but she never doubted herself. Mika Koenig and Arthur Shields might find her, they might even hurt her, but they would not take her back alive. She carried another FBI asset under her arm—her Glock pistol, loaded and perfectly fitted to her smaller grip. If all else failed, she meant to go out in a hail of fire.
She wrapped up tight inside Charlie’s sleeping bag, content and self-assured. Kind of. True survivors were those who made up their minds to be self-reliant, and that was what she was. True survivors faced what the world threw at them, and they fortified themselves to do it alone. She’d made that decision to be a survivor years ago at the edge of a lonely grave. Alone worked better in the long run, both personally and professionally. It brooked fewer complications. Why change?
The moment her eyelids flickered shut, words she could not clearly decipher soothed even as they worried. They seemed to whisper I’m coming for you, but not in a frightening way. Not as a threat at all. More like a promise. Eden stiffened in her molded seat. She tilted forward, striving to see past the shattered windshield when she couldn’t. Sometimes, the simple act of thinking she could allowed more second sight. More vision.
The farthest edge of her peripheral wavered, as if flexing its far-sighted muscles. Eden stilled as her psychic sight struggled with a glimmer of light, and on its heels, a particularly sensual premonition. The distinct shape of a man stepped forward from the pre-dawn murk. No definite facial features identified him enough to make him recognizable, yet she sensed he searched deliberately for her, though not as a predator. More as a—protector?
Ky (In the Company of Snipers Book 13) Page 3
