She crawled again. Slowly. Carefully. The mud sloshing through her fingers. The ground became firmer the higher she went. Okay. This was okay. She wished she had a light …
Idiot! Brian Stone had given them all emergency lights. Shake and break, he’d said. The long stick was still in her pocket. She pulled it out with trembling fingers, holding it as if it were a life jacket. Shake. Break. A faint glow emanated from the stick. She held it up.
A skull glowed inches from her face.
She screamed.
Dean stopped walking. “Did you hear that?” he asked. He, Brian Stone, and Sheffield were back in the original mine, going down a long shaft following metal rails that had been laid more than one hundred fifty years ago.
“I hear water,” Brian said.
“Good sign,” Sheffield replied, spry for his age. He led the way. “The cavern opens up down here. Unless the river has changed flow dramatically over the last hundred years.”
Dean didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t. He would find Sonia. He wasn’t going to let her die, not like this.
They continued walking down the shaft.
“Help me!”
“Did you hear that?” Brian said. “She’s not far.”
She’s alive.
Sonia cried out again. How were they going to find her in here? She held the light up, but the cavern was so huge she couldn’t see the walls around her.
She heard a grunt and splash. “Help me! Help!” She cried out. “It’s Sonia.”
“Sonia! Thank God.”
“Charlie? Where are you?”
“I see your light.”
He grunted like he was in pain. She held up the light and saw a dark red shirt in the water as Charlie struggled to get up the slope she’d landed on. She slid down the mud and held out her hand.
He took it. Slowly, she pulled him out of the water.
His shirt hadn’t been red when she last saw him.
“Oh, God, Charlie, what happened?”
“They said you fell. I didn’t know if you had been shot or what. I came after you.”
“Why?” She hugged him tightly. “Charlie, you’re bleeding.”
“There are rocks. I—” He coughed. “I hit them.”
She held up her light and pulled up his shirt. His chest was bloodied; she saw a rib protruding.
“Charlie, lie still.” She pulled off her flak jacket, then her T-shirt. She wrapped it as best she could around Charlie. Tears streamed down her face. Charlie was in bad shape.
“We have to get you out.” He closed his eyes and coughed up water, mud, and blood.
“Why did you follow me? You didn’t know. I could have been dead. I don’t want you to die.”
“That’s a first,” he said faintly.
“I hate what you did, Charlie, but I don’t hate you.”
“You should.”
He didn’t say anything for a long minute. Sonia heard something over and above the water. Faintly, “Sonia!”
She called out as loud as she could, “Over here! Help!”
“Sonia! We’re coming.”
She saw a bright light bouncing against the walls of the cavern.
“Help’s coming, Charlie. Hold still.”
He shook uncontrollably, going into shock.
“Charlie, hold on. It’s just a little time.”
“I want to die, Sonia. I need to die.”
“No. No, dammit! You taught me so much. I’m stronger because of you.”
“You’re strong.” He coughed and this time blood poured from his mouth. “Because of you.”
“Sonia!” Dean called.
“Here!” She waved her glow-stick. “Charlie’s hurt!”
“I’m coming!”
Sonia said to Charlie, “Dean’s coming. Help’s here. Hold on.”
“Forgive me, sweetheart.”
“I forgive you. I forgive you, Charlie, dammit!”
“Find. What happened to Ashley. Please.”
“You’ll find her. Dammit, Charlie, fight!”
The bright lights showed the cavern to be monstrous in size, and Sonia sat on a small cutout. She couldn’t believe how much water was in here. She couldn’t believe she’d survived.
“Don’t die, Charlie.”
There was a ramp and railing that went around the top of the cavern. Dean walked across the precarious edge to get to her. She willed him to be safe. She couldn’t lose him. The five minutes it took to reach her seemed like an eternity.
He didn’t say a word, just held her. He was trembling.
Sonia said, “Charlie’s hurt.”
Reluctantly, Dean let her go. He inspected Charlie’s injuries and checked his pulse.
“Honey, he’s gone.”
“No. No.” She let Dean gather her into his lap and hold her while she cried until Brian Stone came down with a rope to bring them all up, the living and the dead.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Four Weeks Later
Sonia had never seen so many people in her parents’ house.
She put on her best smile and walked through the crowd, greeting everyone.
It had been a perfect day up until an hour ago, when Dean left their wedding reception after giving her a quick kiss and telling her he’d be right back.
To Sonia, right back meant five or ten minutes. Not—she glanced at her watch—sixty-seven.
She made her way to the kitchen, which was surprisingly devoid of people. She crossed to the window and looked into the backyard.
Her parents were there with Riley, Max, and their cousins. She had been tickled when Max showed up with a three-day leave for the Fourth of July weekend. “I couldn’t miss my sister’s wedding,” he’d told her when he surprised her at the rehearsal dinner the night before.
The day had been perfect, but it would have been even more so if Wendell could have lived long enough to see her married to a man like Dean Hooper. He would have liked him.
Sonia didn’t know if she’d ever put to rest the trail of blood left by Noel Marchand, but knowing he wasn’t her biological father helped. It was hard to think of him as anything but—she’d lived nine years with him, traveling from village to village in Central and South America. And although she now knew he was using her to lure his prey, she remembered teaching the children English and French and basic math; she’d taken pride in the farms she helped establish. As Dean told her one night when she couldn’t sleep, focus on the positive and the good, and put the bad on a shelf.
“I know you’ll remember it’s there, but if it’s far enough from sight you’ll forget for a time. And when you do remember, I’ll be here. Always.”
Sonia turned and jumped when a man walked in.
“Sorry,” Dean’s brother, Will, said. The Hooper brothers didn’t look alike, but they had the same chocolate-brown eyes and square jaw. “You have a big family.”
Sonia almost corrected him—her family was actually small—but then she realized her friends, her colleagues, Dean’s colleagues, they were like family. She smiled. “I’m lucky.”
“Dean’s the lucky one. I never thought he’d get married to anything but his job. And giving up that post in Washington, oh, sorry. Is that a sore point?”
“Not at all.” Dean had given up his prestigious position in Washington to relocate to Sacramento and take the job as assistant special agent in charge. Some might think it was a demotion, but Dean told her he wanted the change of pace, the challenge and her. “Sacramento is your home. This is where your family is. They’re going to be my family. I’m not leaving them. I love them, almost as much as I love you.”
Will said, “I thought I’ll sneak away for a few minutes. My wife wanted to take a walk through that park down the street.”
“It’s a nice place. Riley and I played baseball and soccer and basketball there all the time. There’s a little zoo if you walk all the way to the other side, right next to the church.”
“You don’t
mind, do you? Thirty minutes?”
“Take all the time you want.”
“Where’s Dean?”
“I don’t know. He had an errand.”
Will’s redheaded wife came running in. “Ready?” she said and they went off on their walk, hand in hand.
Sonia turned back to the window. The Rogans, two of them anyway, were there. Sean Rogan was showing Andres something—a card game, Sonia thought. Great, just what she needed—Andres beating them at yet another game. The kid was a whiz. She didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but she was pulling every string, and she had a lot she could pull, to keep him here. Owen and Marianne loved him and wanted him. He had no one else.
Kane couldn’t make it, but Sonia wasn’t surprised. He rarely came to the States anymore. But he’d called her that morning and they talked about Charlie and the past, as well as the future. “You forgave him, he knows that,” Kane had said. “And he died a hero. That’s all he wanted.”
“I’m looking for Ashley Fox,” she’d told him. “We found Jones’s old journals and are piecing together information. But—”
“You think she’s dead.”
“Yes, But I’ll confirm it if it’s the last thing I do. Her mother deserves to know what happened.” And for Charlie.
She’d never forget the night in the mine. She’d never forget the cloying fear. It didn’t matter that she’d come out on the other side and hadn’t let her claustrophobia beat her, she still woke up shaking, feeling the weight of the world on top of her…
“Sonia.”
She smiled, recognizing her husband’s voice. She turned and was surprised to see a young pretty woman with him.
“Maya.”
The girl nodded, looked at Dean with wide eyes. “Andres?” she asked.
“He’s out back,” Sonia said.
Dean walked Maya outside and Sonia watched from the window again. When Andres saw his sister, love and relief crossed his face. He ran to her and hugged her tightly. Tears streamed down their faces, and Sonia’s own tears flowed as well.
She heard Dean return to the kitchen and turned and embraced him. “You found her.”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up again,” he said. Ever since they’d cracked Jones’s code a week after the mine incident, they’d thought they’d found Maya twice. Each time they’d been mistaken, though they’d rescued several underage prostitutes in the process.
“How is she?”
“She’s okay.” He wiped away her tears. “She’s strong, like you. She’ll need help, but she’ll make it. Because of family.” They looked out the window as Andres introduced his sister to Owen and Marianne. “I told your parents yesterday morning. They want Maya, too.”
“I’m going to cry all over again.” She took a deep breath. “That was a wonderful surprise. You are incredible.”
“Just call me Mr. Incredible.”
She laughed and kissed him, savoring his taste. “I can hardly wait until tonight, and you’d better be Mr. Incredible.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Tonight? What’s tonight?” He smiled and kissed her. “I have one more surprise.”
“I don’t think I can handle any more excitement.”
“Just this one.”
“All right. One more.” She grinned as she followed him out the side door. They walked down the street. It was the most beautiful Fourth of July—hot, blue, and free. She was free, and she would never forget anything—the good and the bad—that had brought her to this place, these people, this peace.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they turned the corner.
He didn’t answer her, but pulled her along. He was grinning and practically bouncing on the balls of his feet—very unlike the serious Dean Hooper she knew.
“Dean, what’s going on?”
“Be patient.”
“I’m not a patient person.”
“Fifty feet.”
“What?”
He stopped in front of a two-story Mission-style house with a wide porch and flowers everywhere. It fronted the quiet side of South Land Park, two blocks from her parents’ house.
There was a real estate sign in the front yard. Underneath it was a sign that said sold.
Her heart thudded. “What’s this?”
“Our home.”
Read on for an excerpt from
CUTTING EDGE
by
Allison Brennan
Published by Ballantine Books
The arson had been hot, fast, and lethal.
The cloying, acrid scent of the extinguished fire had FBI agent Nora English breathing through her mouth as she walked carefully through the extinguished remains of the research wing of Butcher-Payne Biotech, her boots sloshing through the water left behind by the firefighters. Tens of thousands of gallons of water had flowed into this wing to put out the blaze, and the crew was surveying the building, axing the remaining interior walls that had been charred to ensure there were no hot spots.
They’d been damn lucky. The summer had been particularly dry, and the trees surrounding BPB in a canyon off the two-lane highway could easily have caught fire, spreading through the crisp timber and underbrush faster than they could respond. Fortunately, there’d been no wind to push the fire, and the first firefighters to respond had done a magnificent job saturating the roof and surrounding grounds. In addition, the solid exterior and internal firewalls of the five-year-old building had contained the fire wholly within the research wing.
“And the fire sprinklers didn’t go on as they were supposed to,” the Placer County fire chief, Ansel Nobel, said as he escorted Nora to where the body had been found. He sat on the standing Multi-Jurisdictional Domestic Terrorism Joint Task Force—DOMFOR—that the FBI had implemented shortly after 9/11. “The most recent inspection was three months ago. They were functioning properly. I don’t understand.”
“Have you checked the water pump station? Is this area on a city pump or well water?”
“There’s a water storage tank uphill for—damn, that’s it.”
“Excuse me?”
“The water storage tank is for the hydrants. The sprinklers are on another system maintained by the county. When we hooked up to the hydrants without any problems, I assumed it was faulty sprinklers.”
“I’ll ask my partner to check it out.” She called Harry Antonovich, a senior long-time agent with the FBI who led Sacramento FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Squad and pioneered many of the Evidence Response Team protocols related to domestic terrorism. Harry had trained her when she was a new agent right out of Quantico, and Nora didn’t want to think about his retirement at the end of the year.
“Harry, it’s Nora. Chief Nobel said the sprinklers didn’t go on. The pump may have been sabotaged—can you talk to the sheriff’s department and get a team over there to check it out?”
“Absolutely. What’s it like inside?”
“Wet.”
His voice had a modicum of restrained humor. “I meant damages.”
“Same apparent burn pattern. Started in the lab and was contained ninety percent in the lab and adjoining offices. The lobby walls have some damage. Hot enough to melt some of the equipment, but that’s beyond my expertise.”
“When’s Quin going to get here?”
Nora hesitated a moment. Her sister had a reputation, and she hated to fuel it. But this was Harry. “She had a date.”
“It’s five in the morning.”
“In San Francisco. She promised she’d leave immediately. She wasn’t on call tonight,” Nora defended.
“I’m not being critical, but we need her. I don’t need to tell you they’re escalating.”
The arson gang they’d been investigating for eighteen months had never killed before. The three previous arsons had targeted the same industry—biotechnology—but the first two were in warehouses, and the third fire was in a small genetic research building at the zoo. BPB was a multimillion-dollar company that employed more than fi
fty people.
Other than the dead body, the MO was the same. Why BPB? Why now? Why kill? Accident or premeditated murder?
“Something else is going on. This just doesn’t feel right to me.” Nora caught herself twisting her short hair between her thumb and forefinger. She tucked the curls behind her ear and dropped her hand.
“Have you seen the vic?”
“I’m heading that way now.”
“I did a field test on the graffiti. The paint matches the other arson fires.”
“Dammit, Harry, they haven’t killed anyone before.”
“It was just a matter of time, kid. You know that. I’ll go check the pumps and get back to you.” He hung up.
Chief Nobel said, “It’s happened before.”
“Excuse me?”
“Arsonists. Set the fire not knowing someone is inside.”
“It still makes them murderers, whether they intended to kill him or not.”
Nobel stood in front of the opening into Jonah Payne’s office. “Brace yourself, it’s not pretty.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
Nora buried her emotions deep. It didn’t matter how many times she saw a dead body, or in what condition, the anger and deep sadness at a life taken too soon could overwhelm her if she didn’t close off her feelings. She couldn’t afford to impair her critical judgment. Cops learned to compartmentalize to do the job or they ended up dead or drunk. There was a reason cops had nearly twice the suicide rate as the population at large.
Her ability to fully detach herself had earned her the reputation as level-headed by those who liked her, and a cold bitch by those who didn’t.
Chief Nobel stepped aside. Bright crime-scene tape crisscrossed the charred opening leading into Dr. Jonah Payne’s office off the main research laboratory. The office itself wasn’t large, approximately fourteen feet square. Paper fueled the flames in here, soggy remnants of pulp everywhere, higher piles of ash and partially burned paper on the credenza behind the large desk. No windows, no natural light—Nora couldn’t fathom how anyone could work in such conditions.
The victim, presumed to be Jonah Payne, was flat on his back on the floor in front of his desk, which instantly seemed odd to Nora. She’d only investigated one domestic terrorism case that had resulted in fire deaths: in that case, the fourteen victims had been trapped in a burning building and all had died of smoke inhalation. The bodies had either been in fetal positions or prone.
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