by Cindy Dees
“How?” she stuttered. “How are you…”
“Alive?” he finished for her. “I left the door open when I started the Jeep and the first blast blew me out of the car.”
She looked up abruptly at the wall of snow over their heads. “Who?” she gasped. “Are they here? Now?”
“That’s a damn good question,” Dutch growled. “If they’re not here already, they will be soon. In these mountains, the sound of that blast will carry for miles.”
Julia looked over her shoulder at the column of light and smoke rising high into the night sky. It could probably be seen for miles, too. Her father hadn’t gotten word to his men to back off until he got his money back. Was it just that the message hadn’t been received yet or—Oh, God—had her last-ditch strategy failed.
Dutch growled, “We’ve got to get out of here now. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head in the negative. “I was still on the porch.”
Dutch set her aside swiftly and rolled to his knees. “Stay low. Follow me,” he murmured. He crawled away from the burning shell of the Jeep, tunneling a path through the snow. Bemused, she followed him down the hill, toward one side of the cabin. But the road was the other direction!
Nonetheless, she scrambled along behind him, her gloves soaked and the snow cold on her face and neck. Dutch angled slightly away from the cabin itself and headed into the woods behind the log structure.
They almost made it to the perimeter of the trees when a spray of snow shot up in front of her.
Dutch swore and dropped flat.
He didn’t have to tell her to do the same. Someone was shooting at them. He motioned for her to crawl beside him. She inched forward on her belly, getting snow in her mouth and up her nose.
“I’m going to move away from you and lay down some suppression fire. Do you know what that is?”
She nodded immediately. Her father’s men talked about such things all the time. Dutch was going to spray a bunch of bullets at the bad guys to force them to duck and stop shooting long enough for her to go somewhere. “Where do you want me to go?” she murmured.
He pointed farther down the hill. “Head for those trees. I’ll catch up with you. Keep going the same direction we’ve been heading.”
She nodded her understanding.
He nodded grimly at her and pushed forward into the snow, slithering away from her quickly.
When he popped up out of the snow and began firing back toward the cabin, she took off running in a half crouch as fast as she could through the snow toward the trees. She dived for the dark shadows of the woods, relieved when its black blanket wrapped around her. She was tempted to stop and wait for Dutch to join her, but he’d said to keep going.
And then, out of nowhere, a hand grabbed her elbow,
Dutch grunted, “One shooter. But he has no doubt called in the rest of the goon squad. We need to hurry.”
They slipped and slid down the mountain, and then, without warning, Dutch swerved hard to the left. He didn’t go far. Maybe a hundred feet. He stopped.
She listened carefully to the sounds around them, and heard nothing but a faint whistle of wind moving through the treetops far above. Dutch stepped around a bushy juniper and disappeared from sight. She followed him and stopped in her tracks when she rounded the tree. A wooden door lay in front of them, recessed into a vertical wall of rock. What in the world was this?
Dutch stepped up to it and bent down to work on the lock. It was pitch-black where he stood. Was it even possible to pick a lock in total darkness? But then Dutch stood up and his hand twisted as if he was releasing a padlock. The wide door opened inward with a gentle creak. She cringed as the noise split the silence around them.
Dutch waved her forward to join him. She stepped into the cavelike space. He shined his pocket light around the room, and relief flooded her as the narrow beam landed upon a pair of powerful snowmobiles. Praise the Lord.
Dutch was already moving, poking around behind the vehicles. Triumphantly, he held up a red plastic gas can and a ring of keys. He pressed a gun into her hand. “Watch the door. Shoot anything that moves.”
She nodded, even though the idea of shooting anyone scared her out of her mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him move to the nearest machine and begin trying keys in the ignition. About the fifth key slid in. He pulled it off the ring and went to work on the second snowmobile’s ignition.
He commented quietly, “The tanks read full on both of these puppies. There’s another couple gallons of gas in the can I found. Can you drive one yourself? We’ll go faster if we each have our own.”
She nodded gamely.
Dutch murmured, “The second we start the engines, we’ll need to blast out of here fast. The noise will draw whoever wired the Jeep. I’ll go first and you follow me. We’ll head down the mountain, away from the road. Got it?”
She nodded. And started when his gloved hand came up to touch her cheek for an instant. But it was enough. They were still in this together.
Dutch pushed the door wide open and came back inside, flinging his leg over a snowmobile. “Let’s do it.”
She straddled the other big machine and gripped the handlebars. At his nod, she turned the key and gunned the throttle. The machine roared to life between her knees. The sound inside the enclosed space was deafening.
Wasting no time, Dutch shot outside. She followed clumsily, still getting a feel for the throttle. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light in the forest, and she followed his shadow doggedly as he wove in and out among the trees in front of her.
Her back itched like someone was watching her, tracking their descent. But given how thick the trees were around them and overhead, it was no doubt just her imagination. But that didn’t stop panic from bubbling just beneath the surface of her mind.
Her fingers went numb in a matter of minutes, and her feet weren’t far behind. Although she was dressed warmly, she wasn’t dressed for the artificial windchill of shooting down a mountain like a bat out of hell. She lost the feeling in her cheeks first, then her whole face went numb. Needles of icy snow stung her skin, and an insidious lethargy stole into her limbs.
She dared not stop, though. Dutch would never hear her over the roar of his snowmobile, and she’d be all alone, lost somewhere in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains with a pack of killers behind her.
Their flight turned into an interminable nightmare of snow and shadow whooshing past her half-frozen body.
And somewhere during the endless ordeal on that frozen mountain, she realized something. She’d been right, back at the cabin. She would never beat her father at his own game. It just wasn’t in her to play dirty enough to win. She’d been a fool to think she could save herself, and she was a fool to believe that Dutch alone could save her.
She had to cut her losses as best she could. Odds were she wouldn’t walk out of this alive. But maybe Dutch and Carina could.
Besides his money, there was one other thing her father wanted. And she’d willingly hand it over to him in return for Dutch’s and Carina’s lives. Now she just had to figure out how to do it without Dutch stopping her.
Chapter 15
After about an hour, Dutch stopped long enough to siphon the remaining gas out of Julia’s snowmobile. Speed no longer mattered. Now distance was the name of the game. They’d go farther if they saved the gas and traveled on one snowmobile. He poured the spare gas into his fuel tank and said a silent prayer that the machine would get them to the nearest human habitation.
He took his bearings and mentally pictured the map he’d studied at the log cabin the day before. As best he could tell, they’d fled mostly to the south. If he was correct, then a couple of little towns lay not far to the west of them now.
They climbed on the machine and set out. Julia’s body pressed intimately against his, sending his thoughts careening off in a dozen different directions. Concentrate, buddy. Bad guys were running around out here somewhere, hunting them like animals. He
had to stay sharp.
But it was damn hard to do with her breasts pressing against his back and her arms wrapped around him like that.
After about half an hour, he paused just inside a line of trees, eyeing the road before him. Did he dare travel it in search of fuel and a phone? What were the odds that whoever had narrowly missed killing them earlier would be patrolling the local side roads? His basic survival training warned him that a road was far too open. Far too dangerous to risk.
But they couldn’t run around in the mountains indefinitely. Sooner or later, they’d have to come out of hiding. If they did it now, they stood some chance of running into Ferrare’s goons. But if they waited, the bastards would have time to call in reinforcements. The longer he waited, the higher the odds were that they’d be caught. Even though it made him twitchy, he guided the snowmobile onto the snow-packed road.
The gas gauge on the machine was getting dangerously low when they finally rounded a curve and saw a building in front of them. Two gas pumps out front proclaimed it to be exactly what he was looking for. More relieved than he cared to admit, Dutch drove into the parking lot of what turned out to be an old-fashioned general store.
The proprietor pointed Dutch to a pay phone in the back corner by the rest rooms. While Julia slipped into the bathroom to run her hands under warm water and thaw out a bit, he dialed Charlie Squad headquarters. A command-post controller picked up the line.
“Dutch here. Is the old man available?”
“He said to patch you through to him no matter when you called. And boy, is he antsy to talk to you. Haven’t seen the colonel this worked up in a while. Where are you?”
Until the mole was caught, he wasn’t telling anybody but the colonel anything. He laughed lightly into the controller’s ear. “Hell if I know where I am.”
Dutch waited impatiently as his call was transferred to Colonel Folly’s home. It was only a few seconds until his boss came on the line.
The colonel wasted no time on niceties. “Where in the hell have you been?” he growled.
“Would you mind throwing this on to your secure line, sir?”
The colonel complied in silence. A faint buzz came on the line, indicating that nobody else could listen in. The colonel announced grimly, “I’ll delete the recording of this call when we’re done so our mole can’t get at it. Now, what’s up, Dutch?”
“Eduardo Ferrare’s thugs blew up our Jeep with me in it a couple of hours ago. Fortunately, I had the door open and got blown clear of the fireball.”
The colonel uttered a sharp curse under his breath, a sure sign he was not a happy camper. “Did you see the perpetrators?” he asked tersely.
“Nope. But it had to be Ferrare’s people, unless the locals around here have started blowing cars up for fun.”
Folly retorted, “I need you to bring her in. Let’s get her into custody and talking so we can find out everything there is to know about Eduardo.”
Dutch sighed. “Don’t think I can do that, sir.”
The colonel’s voice went dead flat. “And why not?”
Dutch flinched at the ominous chill in his boss’s voice. He couldn’t blame the guy. In their line of work, a disobeyed order usually led to someone dying.
Dutch explained carefully, “Julia’s doing her best to help us already. But she’s refusing to testify until we get the sister away from her old man. And I can’t say as I blame her. In the meantime, Julia’s moved six hundred million dollars of her father’s money into Charlie Squad’s Swiss bank account.”
“Holy sh—” the colonel exclaimed.
“But she’s not willing to cooperate much more than that until Carina’s safe. Since we don’t know who’s working for Ferrare at the FBI or within our own organization, I think it would be safer for her to go to ground out here with me. Especially now that the bastard’s demonstrated a willingness to kill her.”
Folly sighed. “You’ve got no choice, man. She’s wanted by the FBI. You have to bring her in and take your chances that the one or two bad agents in the whole bureau won’t be the ones you hand her over to. The odds are stacked strongly in favor of her being just fine.”
Dutch closed his eyes in frustration.
Colonel Folly continued, “Even if bringing her in is a risk, we have to take that chance. What she knows is too important to us.”
Dutch’s anger flared up. “Since when do we sacrifice innocents in the name of achieving military objectives?”
The colonel’s next words fell heavily against his ear. “She’s not an innocent, Dutch.”
And therein lay the rub. She wasn’t an innocent. She’d been in cahoots with her father, willingly or otherwise, for years. Even if her old man was holding her sister hostage to make her cooperate, Julia’s hands were far from clean.
The colonel spoke into the heavy silence. “Have you forgotten she’s the one who set us up and got Simon killed?”
It was a low blow, but he couldn’t blame the colonel for taking it. “She wants to do the right thing.”
The colonel’s opinion of that was succinct. “Bull. Bring her in, Dutch. Now. That’s an order.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think I can do that. I’m not willing to endanger her life like that.”
“Come on, Dutch. Don’t do this. We’re talking about your career, here. In six months, maybe a year, you could be in command of the squad. Don’t throw away the last dozen years of distinguished service for a woman. We’re talking court-martials here. A dishonorable discharge. Hell, jail time. She’s not worth it.”
Dutch sighed. “That’s the problem. She is worth it.”
The colonel let loose a rare string of curses having to do with conniving women turning gullible men’s heads. Finally he composed himself and said, “Look. I’ve got to make this official.”
Dutch heard the colonel say away from the receiver, “Annie, honey, I need you to pick up the other phone.”
The click of a receiver indicated she’d come on the line.
“Hi, Annie.”
“Hi, Dutch. How’s it going?”
He laughed with scant humor. “You’re about to find out it’s not going so great.”
Colonel Folly said formally, “Annie, as a duly appointed officer in the armed forces, I’d like you to witness the order I’m about to give.”
“Ah. Okay,” she said soberly.
Folly continued, “Dutch, I am ordering you, under my full authority granted by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to bring in Julia Ferrare and turn yourself in immediately. Do you understand my order?”
Dutch answered heavily. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you for any reason believe this to be an unlawful order?”
“No, sir.”
“And do you understand the potential consequences of refusing to follow this order?”
“Yes, sir.”
A pause. The colonel said grimly, “Don’t do this, Dutch.”
He replied equally grimly. “I have no choice. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Me, too. And Dutch?”
“Yeah?”
“You be careful. Don’t take on Eduardo Ferrare by yourself.”
“I’ve got no choice on that one, either.”
“Stay in touch. Your leave expires in a couple of days. I don’t want to have add going AWOL to the list of charges you’re going to face.”
Dutch hung up the phone slowly. Stared at it for a long minute. Bloody hell. He’d just flushed his entire goddamn career down the toilet.
Julia peeked out of the bathroom cautiously a few moments later. Dutch’s murmured voice had gone silent with the click of the phone receiver into its cradle. All clear. Thank goodness. She also needed to make a phone call. A private one. And her cell-phone battery was getting low. The little hallway in front of the bathrooms was empty. Dutch had disappeared. She sidled up to the pay phone and quickly dialed a familiar phone number. A woman answered in Spanish.
Julia replied in the same language. “Inez, i
t’s Julia. Is my father home?”
The maid answered in fearful surprise. “No, Miss Julia, he isn’t. But he left orders to forward your call to him if you contacted him.”
“Tell his assistant to transfer me, will you?”
It was a measure of just how ticked off her father was that he came on the line almost instantly. “So, my wayward daughter decides to grace me with her attention, does she?” he purred menacingly in her ear.
Julia quailed at the sound. If she’d been standing in front of him in person, she’d have been in mortal fear for her life. It was the same tone he used to order peoples’ deaths. “We need to talk,” she managed to force past her constricted throat.
“Do tell,” he replied cagily.
“If you kill me, it could take you months or years to find your money, and even then you could have a very difficult time getting any of it back. I can hand it all to you in a matter of a few minutes.”
“Indeed,” he said silkily. “So where exactly is my money?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I’ve got something you want, and you’ve got something I want.”
“Not over the phone,” he whispered.
She winced. She’d been afraid he might say that. The man had been bugged, tailed and wiretapped so many times over the years that he never, ever, did serious business except in person.
“All right. We’ll meet,” she agreed reluctantly.
“Where? And when?” he demanded.
My, my. Daddy dearest sounded plenty eager to get his hands on all his millions. Maybe this plan might work after all. She thought fast. “Montana. I’ll call you tomorrow with an exact location and time.”
“Call my cell phone,” he ordered tersely.
“All right,” she mumbled. “I’ll be in touch.”
“You do that, baby girl. Oh, and your sister sends her greetings.”
Julia gnashed her teeth at the reminder that he had Carina and wouldn’t hesitate to hurt or kill her. She hung up the phone and glared at it. Baby girl, indeed. Once, just once, she’d like to best him. Make him really squirm. Now, if she could only embrace her anger long enough to hold at bay the panic careening in her gut at the thought of facing her father, maybe she wouldn’t faint.
