by Alex Kava
Ben had called them a cleanup team that Colonel Hess had sent down to help. But now she understood why the colonel had used the term “cleanup.” She and Kunze were right. Hess and maybe others at the DoD didn’t want anyone to know about this mess, especially not while they were battling Congress to keep their other secrets under wraps.
“So your job was never recovery,” she said as she handed over her Glock. “You were here to cover up all this mess. Is there even a lockbox?”
“My men found it this morning. It’s already being transported down the mountain and into the trunk of my SUV. Before nightfall I’ll have it in a safe place.”
“I understand why you need to get rid of me,” O’Dell said. “I saw the results of the experiments that were going on here. Is that why you murdered Dr. Shaw and the others?”
Ross frowned at her. “I didn’t kill them. And I don’t know anything about experiments. I arrived after the landslide. Who knows what happened here? My team was hired to recover the bodies and lockbox.”
“And make sure no one knows about any of it.” She glanced back at Grace and Creed and a knot tightened in her stomach. “They didn’t even see the bodies. Let them go.”
“I didn’t suggest they come.”
The knot moved up into her throat and threatened to choke her. My God, he was right.
That’s when Maggie saw something else down in the hole. A flap of blond hair, bloodied by a gunshot wound at the temple. Peter Logan.
70.
When Ross pulled out the gun, Creed had seen something else almost tumble out of his pocket. It looked an awful lot like a detonator.
And suddenly Creed understood what Grace had been alerting to. There were explosives down below. Ross must have helped set them. He still had residue on his hands or clothes. Creed kept his hand inside Grace’s carrier, petting her, reassuring her as best he could.
“Why bring us all the way out here just to kill us?” Maggie asked.
She was trying to remain calm, but Creed had already caught a glimpse of panic in her eyes.
That Ross had the gun pointed at him instead of Maggie was good. It could give her a chance to fight even if it was only seconds after he fired at Creed.
“The place is ready to blow up,” Ross told her. “Accidents happen. There’s an awful lot of spilled fuel, ruptured propane lines. It’s a shame that you two were poking around up here when it happened.”
“So you started the fire last night.”
He shrugged.
“And you killed Dr. Gunther. That was no accident.”
“Collateral damage.”
He said it with no emotion, like a dozen other soldiers Creed knew. It was drilled into them. But this wasn’t war. And then something occurred to Creed.
“The floodwaters yesterday. That wasn’t an accident, either, was it?” he asked the man.
“Would have certainly made it a lot easier if you’d both died then.”
“By ‘both’ you mean me and Logan,” Maggie said.
The stoic look on Ross’s face told Creed that Logan was already part of the collateral damage.
“So who exactly do you work for?” Creed asked.
“More importantly,” Maggie added, “who do you kill for, Ross?”
When he said nothing, Maggie added, “It’s Colonel Abraham Hess, isn’t it?”
Creed knew if Ross couldn’t force them down into the hole he’d have no problem shooting them and dropping their bodies down. He’d probably even shoot Grace. And that made Creed angry.
“I’m letting Grace go,” he told Ross as he started to bend down, making sure to put his body between the dog and the gun.
“No, don’t move. Stop right now or I’ll wound you and make you watch me shoot the dog.”
Creed stopped but stayed hunched over the carrier, protecting Grace as best he could. He kept his hand in the carrier. He glanced at Maggie and caught a glimpse of her eyes again. He expected to see regret. If not for him, then for Grace. That’s not what he saw. Instead he saw anger and fight. And while Ross was paying attention to Creed crouching down on the ground, he wasn’t paying as much attention to Maggie.
Sometimes when Creed did a search and rescue it took them to strange and dangerous places. He usually came prepared, not necessarily to protect himself but always with the thought of protecting his dogs. There were plenty of things in the wilderness that could harm them. And although he never wore a gun, he armed himself with whatever might be needed to fight off coyotes or even bears.
With his hand hidden inside the carrier he found the canister of pepper spray safely stowed in the back pocket. His fingers wrapped around it even with Grace fidgeting.
“Get back up on your feet. Now.”
Creed slid the carrier off his shoulder and rested it on the ground with Grace still in it. He’d need to shoot the spray up into Ross’s face without getting any of it on Grace. As he started to rise he heard the gunshot.
It knocked Creed off his feet. The bullet had hit him in the chest. Pain exploded inside him. Sucked the air out of his lungs. Creed fell on top of Grace. All he could think about was protecting her with his body. Just like seven years ago when he protected Rufus.
He saw starbursts behind his eyes. He didn’t even hear the second gunshot.
71.
O’Dell lunged for her own weapon on the ground. She expected Ross to turn his gun on her. Instead, he shot Creed in the chest.
No, she didn’t want to believe what she saw.
Seconds ticked by. Her fingers grabbed the handle. She heard Creed gasp. She heard the thud as he dropped to the ground. She was rolling onto her back while her finger desperately searched for the trigger. Ross turned the gun on her.
Too late. She’d never make it.
She heard the second gunshot and knew it wasn’t from her gun. Before she could fire she saw the blossom of blood on the side of Ross’s head. She watched, stunned, as his gun slipped from his fingers. He fell to his knees, eyes already dead before he hit the ground.
O’Dell struggled to her feet.
A man stood about ten feet away with a rifle now slung down and pointing at the ground. He wasn’t one of Ross’s team. He wore what looked like medical scrubs, dirty and torn. His feet were wrapped in bandages.
Carefully, O’Dell made her way to Creed while watching the man.
“You folks okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
She wanted to find out and yet she couldn’t bear to see how badly Creed was hurt. If she couldn’t save him.
Or if he was already dead.
She knelt next to him. Grace squirmed out of the carrier and circled around and around. She was sniffing at her owner. O’Dell looked for blood. He had taken a direct hit to his chest.
Grace was licking his face.
“I’m so sorry, Grace,” she told the little dog.
Then Grace started to wag.
O’Dell heard a groan. Suddenly she saw movement. Creed was flat on his back. Eyes open now, looking up at her.
“How in the world—”
“Jason,” he said through gritted teeth as he tried to raise himself up.
“Just stay put for a minute.” She put her hand against his chest and that’s when she felt it under his jacket. “Jason gave you a bulletproof vest?”
“Supposed to be the newest, lightest—” He was gasping for breath. “His buddy Tony. He’s a paranoid bastard.”
She put a finger to his lips. “Please, just stay still.” And even as she was telling him this, she meant it for her own heart, because it was galloping in her chest. “It stopped the bullet, but we need to be careful about your ribs. We need to make sure they don’t puncture a lung.”
“You shoot him?” he asked. “Is he dead?”
She wiped the hair off h
is forehead. “He’s dead, but I didn’t shoot him.”
She looked up and the man in the raggedy clothes had ventured closer, slowly.
“Is he okay?” he asked.
Creed craned his neck to take a look at the man.
“These guys have been up here since yesterday. I knew they were up to no good. They were planting IEDs down in the tunnels.” He held up the rifle. “They forgot this.”
“Who are you?” O’Dell finally asked.
“My name’s Daniel Tate.”
“But how did you—”
Before O’Dell could ask, Tate interrupted. “Not right, him threatening to shoot that dog.”
He bent down and offered Grace his dirty fingers to sniff.
“Just wasn’t right, at all.”
72.
It took some convincing to get the helicopter pilot to leave without Ross. O’Dell had to show him her badge. But he was a local contractor and not part of Ross’s team. He ended up more concerned about the weather and getting them back safely. In the distance they had already heard the beginning rumbles of thunder.
O’Dell had found the detonator in the guardsman’s pocket when she searched for the SUV keys. Creed told her that Grace had been alerting ever since they got into Ross’s vehicle.
“I just couldn’t figure out what it was.”
She told him about Peter Logan and they realized that up near the hole, Grace was probably alerting to the body. The poor little dog had too many scents to tell them about.
Daniel Tate she delivered to Vance. After listening to his story she realized Colonel Hess hadn’t counted on a survivor. Someone who had been used in the facility’s experiments. He kept talking about a spaceman opening a special suitcase and she wondered how many drugs were still in his system. How much of what he told them was real and how much were hallucinations?
She delivered Creed and Grace safely back to their cot in the gymnasium. By then he didn’t have any fight left in him to argue with her. She knew he was in tremendous pain. She only hoped his injuries weren’t severe. All she could concentrate on was that he was alive. For several minutes on the mountain she thought she had lost him a second time.
She left him with Dr. Avelyn and Jason.
“What are you going to do?” he wanted to know.
“I’ll be back,” she promised. “I just need to check and see if Ross was telling the truth about the lockbox.”
The rain had started again when O’Dell headed back out. She was on her way to the SUV when she stopped in the middle of the street. She could hardly believe her eyes. Benjamin Platt was talking to a rescue crew on the sidewalk. He glanced up. Did a double take when he saw her. He said something to the crew and they looked back at her, too.
“God, I am so glad you’re safe.”
He hugged her so tight he practically crushed her to his chest. And only then did she realize how much her body ached from the water rescue yesterday. Was that only yesterday?
“I left you a bunch of messages.”
“I was a little busy.”
“Have you heard from Logan yet?”
“Logan’s dead.”
“What?”
She told him what had happened, giving him as much detail as she could and ignoring the alarm on his face. She was still angry with him.
“My God, I’m so sorry, Maggie,” he said when she was finished. And almost a little too quickly—ever the scientist and soldier—he added, “I got here as soon as I could. I brought down a team with a hazmat van in case we find the samples.”
She was surprised at how disappointed she was that he sounded like the cold government official, the director of USAMRIID, instead of like her boyfriend. He was more concerned with deadly samples in a lockbox than he was about her. Of course, the samples were more important. And it was silly, but she was surprised how much more she needed the boyfriend than the director right now.
“I might be able to tell you exactly where those samples are.”
She ignored his look of astonishment and led him to the muddy black SUV in the far corner of the parking lot. She raised the lift gate. Then she removed the rubber mat from inside to reveal the trapdoor for the spare tire. When she lifted the hatch, she was almost as surprised as Ben. What looked like a harmless black metal suitcase was exactly where Ross had said it would be.
73.
Creed had listened to Dr. Avelyn lecture him about resting. This time she insisted on a chest X-ray. No perforations. A couple of ribs were definitely fractured. She no longer questioned whether or not he had a concussion. About the only thing she had told him that he was happy about was that she didn’t want him to travel for a few days. Although Hannah wanted him back home where she could fuss over him.
How could he leave now when he knew Benjamin Platt was there?
Creed glanced at the three dogs in the corner next to his table in the cafeteria. Jason had insisted that Creed sit while he waited on him.
The dogs had eaten and were lounging next to each other. Molly already fit in, though it broke Creed’s heart when she looked up at everyone walking by, still looking for her owners. He reached down and petted her.
When he looked back up Maggie had come in the cafeteria door. He took small pleasure in the fact that she was alone. But he hated already wondering whether or not she’d be in the cot next to him tonight or if she’d be with Ben Platt.
She saw him from across the room, and as she walked over her eyes never left his. Even as she sat down, choosing the chair across from him. She scooted close so she could plant elbows on the table. The whole time, she didn’t say a word as her eyes held his. So much emotion between the two of them. In less than forty-eight hours she had saved him twice.
Finally she glanced away, using the dogs as an excuse and smiling when Grace pranced over to her.
“Jake and Harvey would instantly fall in love with you,” she told the little dog while scratching behind her ears. Maggie’s eyes darted back to Creed’s.
“You still can’t have her,” he said, and Maggie laughed.
Then she said something Creed never expected.
“Jake and Harvey would fall in love with you, too.”
Before Creed had a chance to say anything, Oliver Vance was making his way directly to their table.
“I’m glad you’re both here,” Vance said. “My crew pulled a vehicle out of a flooded ravine yesterday.”
When Jason and Creed came to the cafeteria they had passed by the whiteboard Vance kept in the gymnasium. The tally for missing persons had gone down to three. But the death toll had risen to seventeen. He was afraid Vance was getting ready to raise that number again.
“How many passengers?” Creed asked.
“Only one, but I recognized the victim.” He looked at Creed. “It was Isabel Klein.” He let the name sink in. “That government woman who brought you here.”
“Klein?” Maggie asked.
“She was Peter Logan’s assistant,” Creed said. “I haven’t seen her since that day. What happened? Did she slide off the road?”
Vance shook his head. “Not unless she was rushing herself to a hospital.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.
“She was shot in the back.”
“Could it have been Ross?” Creed asked Maggie.
“It’s possible.”
“There’s more,” Vance said. “Her left hand was severed at the wrist. So far the rescue crew hasn’t found the hand anywhere inside the vehicle.”
Creed looked at Maggie and her face paled.
“The one Jason and Bolo found in the field,” she said. “It was a left hand. Dr. Gunther said it was a woman’s. But Logan insisted it was the director of the facility’s. He seemed certain it was Dr. Shaw’s.”
“Why would someone kill this woman, take her hand, and plan
t it at the flood site?” Vance was shaking his head. “This sounds like something from Daniel Tate’s messed-up mind. That man is telling some wild tales.”
“There was a diamond ring on the thumb,” Maggie said. Creed could see the alarm building in her eyes. “Logan was sure the ring belonged to Dr. Shaw.” She looked at Vance. “This may sound like a ridiculous question. Did you happen to notice if Isabel Klein’s fingernails were painted? A bright red?”
He thought about that and again shook his head. “I looked at her hand pretty good. There was no fingernail polish.”
“Why would Ross take Isabel’s hand and try to make it look like it was Dr. Shaw’s?” Creed asked.
“I don’t think Ross did it,” Maggie said.
Creed stared at her, and finally the realization hit him.
“Dr. Clare Shaw’s still alive.”
74.
Platt had wanted to take more time and make sure Maggie was okay. He knew she was still very angry with him. He deserved that. When all of this was over he’d find a way to make it up to her. She was safe. That was the important thing.
He’d spent almost an hour moving and securing the lockbox in the mobile lab. Another thirty minutes to gear up in the special hazmat suit he’d brought. Already he was perspiring and fogging up his face shield. He could barely see without wiping a glove across it every few minutes.
The mobile lab was cramped and a far cry from what he was used to. The USAMRIID laboratories at Fort Detrick were state of the art, furnished with some of the best equipment and technology in the world. They’d come a long way from those archaic methods that they had talked about in the last several days during the congressional hearing. Much could be learned from history. What Platt hated to admit was that some things had not changed. There were still threats, just as Hess had said. And there were still too many secrets kept in the name of national security.