by Cindi Myers
“I just realized the man on the phone referred to you as Agent Prescott. How did he know your name?”
“Because I’m the one they’re really after.” He looked at her. “If things go bad out there, I want you to take Ian and run, as far and as fast as you can. Don’t worry about me.”
Her eyes shone with tears and her face was the color of paper. She nodded. “I don’t want to leave you,” she said. “But I have to save Ian.”
“We’ll need to dress warm, with good boots and warm coats, hats and gloves,” he said. “We can swing by your house on the way to the bank and get what you need. The weather forecast is calling for a major storm cell to move into the area by afternoon.”
“The bank opens at nine,” she said. “If we leave here at eight thirty, we can go to my house, then the bank, and leave from there. I can change shoes in the truck on the way down.”
Now that the pressure was on, she had pulled herself together and was all business. “You would have made a good cop,” he said.
Her expressive face revealed anger and pain. “I know you probably mean that as a compliment,” she said. “But I don’t see it that way.” She picked up the gun again and stood. “I’ll be ready to go when you are.”
* * *
THE FIRST FLAKES of snow began to fall as they moved away from Jack’s truck. They had parked the vehicle off the road, hidden by a thick stand of juniper, to the west of the fishing camp. It had taken almost an hour to reach the camp from Durango, the last thirty minutes on a winding snow-packed road that crossed and recrossed the Pine River. “We’ve got to hike about two miles,” Jack said. “We’ll have to find a place where we can watch the camp without being seen.”
Andrea pulled down the knit cap on her head and checked that the gun was secure at the small of her back beneath her winter coat. She hoped she wouldn’t have to fire it, but she would if it meant saving Ian. “I’m ready,” she said.
Jack led the way into the snowy woodland. He moved swiftly but silently, sinking to his shins in snow with each step. Andrea tried to follow in his tracks but was soon out of breath and sweating beneath her layers of clothing. As the snow began to fall harder, she told herself this was a good thing. The storm would keep everyone at the camp inside and the snow would help muffle the sound of their approach.
After they’d walked for half an hour or so, Jack stopped. Andrea moved up beside him and looked down on the river some ten feet below. Ice rimmed the frothing brown water. “If we walk along the riverbank from here, we should come to the camp,” he said.
She shivered, as much from fear of what lay ahead as from the cold soaking through her clothing. Jack pressed something into her hand—the key to his truck. “Do you think you can make it with Ian back to my truck by yourself?” he asked.
She stared up at him. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”
“I plan to. But just in case something happens—can you find your way by yourself?”
She folded her hand over the key, then slid it into her coat pocket. “I can do it. I follow the river, then turn left. That will eventually take me to the road. Your truck is parked just past the telephone pole with the sign tacked to it about a farm auction next month.”
Jack clapped her shoulder. “Good job, remembering that sign.”
“How’s your leg?” she asked. All this hard hiking couldn’t be good for his wounds.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He turned away and started walking again before she could say anything else.
When he stopped again, she could make out the corner of a building maybe fifty yards ahead, the wood siding painted dark green, icicles hanging from the metal roof. Jack dropped to his knees and motioned for her to do likewise.
Snow soaked into her jeans and wet the cuffs of her coat as she crawled along behind Jack. She couldn’t see anything from this height other than snow and Jack himself ahead of her. Then the undergrowth receded and they were in the clearing, behind a building. At the corner of the structure, Jack stood, his weapon drawn. She rose also, her back to the building, heart thudding painfully.
Jack peered around the side of the building. “What do you see?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” he said. “But there are a lot of buildings here. We’re going to have to get closer if we’re going to find Ian.”
The camp looked deserted, the windows in the cabins boarded up, the sign that read Office on one building hanging crooked from a single nail. But the tire tracks in the packed snow of the drive looked fresh, and the smell of wood smoke mingled with the scents of pine trees.
There were nine cabins overall, eight arranged in a half circle, with the office, a larger structure that looked as if it had once contained a residence as well as a store, sitting to one side, nearest the narrow drive that led from the main road. A rusting metal arch marked the entrance to the camp, the sign hanging from the top unreadable from Jack’s position.
He waited, ears straining to hear any sound beyond the whistle of wind through the trees. The cabin they were standing behind was probably empty. In the five minutes or so they had been standing here, he hadn’t heard any sounds from inside. If someone had so much as walked around in there, he and Andrea would have known about it.
Behind him, Andrea shifted her weight from foot to foot, feet crunching on the snow. He checked his watch. A few minutes past ten thirty. If Anderson or whoever he worked for was planning an ambush, they were probably already in place. They’d done a good job concealing themselves, though it would be easy enough to take up positions in the cabins and wait for Jack and Andrea to drive into the yard. Then the kidnappers could converge and take them prisoner or simply open fire and kill them before they had a chance to act.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He was going to find Anderson and whoever else was here before they found him. But first he needed to know where they were keeping Ian.
He turned and leaned toward Andrea, his mouth against her ear. The vanilla-and-honey scent of her seemed out of place in the midst of danger, but it made him more determined than ever to save her son and get her out of harm’s way as quickly as possible. “We’re going to have to search the cabins,” he whispered. “We’ll approach from the back and listen for sounds of movement inside. If we don’t hear anything from any of them, we’ll have to try to get a look inside somehow, by prying the boards off the back window or something.”
She nodded.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “When I give the signal, you run to me.”
He checked the area again. Still no sign of life. He took a deep breath, blew it out, then made a dash for the next cabin in line.
Cursing his throbbing leg, he leaned against the side of the building, waiting for his heart to slow and his breath to grow more even. No signs of movement in the yard. He looked toward Andrea and nodded. She didn’t hesitate but raced toward him.
The back of the cabin contained a single boarded-up window. Jack pressed his ear to the plywood and Andrea did the same. She closed her eyes as she listened, so he took advantage of the moment to study her. Blueish half-moons beneath her eyes testified to her sleepless night, and tension traced fine lines around her mouth. Snow dusted the top of her head and the shoulders of her coat, and as he watched, a shiver ran through her. But she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint.
She opened her eyes, and the sadness of her expression pulled at him. “I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.
He shook his head and indicated that they should move on to the next cabin.
Once again, they pressed their ears to the boarded-up back window and listened. Andrea’s eyes widened as the low rumble of male voice reached them. Jack nodded and strained to make out the words. “Better...kid...boss...” Frowning, he drew back. Whoever was speaking was in the cabin’s front room, too far away to be heard clearly. He
pulled Andrea away from the building.
“I’m going around to the side,” he said. “There’s another window there. If I can hear their conversation, that might help us find Ian and figure out the best way to get to him.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No. It’s too dangerous. Anyone walking by the front of the cabin could see us.”
“Two sets of ears are better than one,” she said. “Besides, I think we’ll both be safer if we stick together.”
He didn’t have time to waste arguing with her, and maybe she had a point. “All right. Let’s go before they leave the cabin.”
Two windows looked out from the side of the cabin. Jack led the way to the front window and crouched low beside it. Andrea moved in close behind him, bracing herself with one hand on his back. Her touch reminded him that there was more at stake with this mission than perhaps any other he had undertaken. He pressed his ear to the bottom of the plywood that covered the window.
“Where are they? Shouldn’t they be here by now?” The speaker’s voice was high and thin, with a flat Midwestern accent.
“It’s not even eleven. They’ll be here.” The second speaker had a deeper, rougher voice, with no identifiable accent.
“This snow might slow them down. The radio said there’s a winter storm warning.”
“It’s just a little snow. If they want to see their kid, they’ll be here.”
“We can’t screw this up. Not after what happened last time.” Footsteps followed these words, as if the first man had begun to pace.
“You and I don’t have to worry about that. We’ll blame the kid getting away on Leo.”
Andrea lurched against him. Jack reached out a hand to steady her and squeezed her arm.
“That’s not going to happen with this one,” the first speaker said. “I told Leo not to let this one out of his sight.”
“He’s only what, five?” the second man said. “The other one was practically a grown man. We should have been more careful.”
“It doesn’t matter. His old man wasn’t cooperating anyway. I say we tell the boss he was causing trouble and we finished him off. It’s not like he’s going to make us show him a body.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He doesn’t overlook details like that.”
“So we do a good job with the fed and he doesn’t worry about anything else,” the first man said.
“When they get here, I get first shot at the fed,” the gravel-voiced man said. “In the gut, so that he dies slowly.”
“Don’t make a mess,” the first man said. “We have to haul the body out of here. I don’t want blood all over the car.”
“I’m not worried about your car. If you had been thinking at all, you would have got a van. We wouldn’t have to worry about anyone seeing inside one of those.”
“There’s no one out here to see into anything,” the first man said. “What about the woman and the kid? What are we going to do with them?”
“What do you think?” Gravel Voice said.
“I ain’t killing no little kid.”
Andrea’s fingers dug into Jack’s back.
“I’ll do it, then. Or Leo will do it. He already has orders to silence the kid if Prescott and the woman bring anybody else with them.”
“As long as I don’t have to do it,” the first man said.
“We don’t have a choice. He knows what we look like. We can’t afford to leave him behind.”
“The woman is pretty,” the first man said. “We ought to keep her around for a little while.”
“It’s just like you to think that way. We haven’t got time. The boss wants all of those feds out of the way.”
“You mean Roland wants them out of the way,” the first man said. “I’m not so sure the boss even knows what’s going on. I think Roland is calling all the shots these days.”
“You had better not let anyone else hear you say that—especially Roland.”
“How much longer do we have to stay out here in the middle of nowhere? I’m ready to get back to the city.”
“When the big job goes down, we’ll be a part of that.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been hearing that for a while now and I ain’t seen any sign that anything is going to happen. I think Roland and the rest of that bunch are just stringing us along.”
“You’re wrong,” Gravel Voice said. “It would have happened before now if it wasn’t for those feds. That’s why what we’re doing is so important. We get rid of them and the rest of the plan can be executed.”
“Listen to you and your five-dollar words.” The pacing stopped. “All right, let’s go. I don’t want Prescott and that woman sneaking into camp when we’re not looking.”
“They won’t get past the traps we set,” Gravel Voice said. “We’ll know if they try to get in.” Footsteps moved toward the door.
Jack grabbed Andrea’s arm and they raced to the cover of the woods behind the cabin. The front door slammed and he caught a glimpse of two men moving away.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment as they caught their breath. Finally, Andrea leaned toward him. “What traps?” she asked.
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. Either he was bluffing, or we got lucky and didn’t set off anything. I think the other man, the one with the higher voice, was Anderson, the man we saw in the restaurant.”
“He mentioned seeing me before.” A shudder ran through her. Jack pushed down his own revulsion at the man and his proposal to keep Andrea alive for a while longer than the others. He couldn’t deny that emotion added urgency to his desire to stop these men, but he couldn’t let feelings guide him. He had to think coldly and logically and rely on his training.
“They were holding a child here before Ian,” Andrea said. “And he got away.”
“Not a little boy like Ian,” Jack said. “They said this one was ‘almost a grown man.’ So a teenager.” He frowned. “No one has reported a missing child in the area. Our office would have heard.”
“Maybe the child wasn’t from here,” Andrea said.
“The names of missing children are in a national database. Still, we don’t know when this happened.”
“They talked as if they had been here awhile,” she said. “Who is Roland?”
“Roland is part of the suspected terrorist cell we’ve been tracking.” Roland had been Duane Braeswood’s right-hand man, but it sounded as if, with Braeswood’s injuries, he might be taking a more prominent role. Jack filed the information away to share with the team. “I can call in my team,” he said. “They could be here in less than an hour and they’ve got the manpower and equipment to surround this place.”
“No! You heard what they said—if anyone else shows up, they’ll kill Ian.”
“We’d have a plan to prevent that. I could move in right away to protect him.”
“I won’t take that kind of chance with my son.” She gripped his arm, her fingers digging in. “I’m really afraid of these people,” she said. “Not just for Ian’s sake, but for yours. They hate you.”
“Most of the people we hunt down hate us. That doesn’t stop us.”
“I knew the people Preston was trying to stop were terrible, and I thought I understood that they were dangerous. But I never met them or saw them, so the danger was always more abstract.” She hugged herself. “This is so much more real and frightening.”
“They’re just people,” he said. “They’re not smarter or stronger or luckier than us. Don’t underestimate them, but don’t make them bigger than they are.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. That makes sense. What do we do now?”
“We need to figure out where they’re hiding Ian, and we need to determine if anyone else is in the camp.”
“They mentioned someone named Leo,” she said. “It sounds as if he’s with Ian.”
“There may just be the three of them. If so, the odds aren’t so bad. But we can’t assume anything. We need to be sure.”
The two men who had been speaking had moved in the direction of the office, so he and Andrea continued down the row of cabins, pausing to listen at each one. But all were silent and seemingly empty. After another twenty minutes or so, they reached the last cabin in line. Smaller than the others, it was also farthest from the entrance. The kidnappers might have chosen it as the best place to keep Ian for these reasons.
Jack paused by the back window and sniffed the damp air. “Do you smell that?” he asked.
“What?” Andrea tilted her head back and sniffed also.
“Wood smoke. It’s stronger here. As if someone had a fire in the woodstove recently.” He stepped back and looked up at the black stovepipe that jutted from the roof. No smoke curled from it, but the odor in the chill air told him it might have, and recently.
They pressed their ears to the plywood over the back window, tensed. Jack listened to the roaring of his own pulse. After a long moment Andrea’s shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “I don’t hear—”
Thump!
They both jumped and Andrea covered her mouth to stifle a cry. She stared at the window, then pressed her ear to the plywood once more. The sound came again. Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Hey! Knock it off, kid. Be still in there!” The man’s voice was broad and nasal, definitely not either of the two men they had overheard earlier. It was a good bet they had found Leo.
Andrea practically vibrated with tension. She hugged Jack to her, then released him. What do we do now? she mouthed.
They could burst into the cabin and try to overpower whoever was in there with the boy—if Ian really was the one making those noises—but they risked being trapped if Anderson and Gravel Voice came running. And they still weren’t certain there weren’t other men in the camp. He pulled Andrea away from the cabin, back into the woods, where they could talk with less chance of being overheard.
