Exposed

by Laura Griffin

  “I think this would be better cover in the middle of summer.” He maneuvered the car between a few tall junipers and cut the engine. “But we don’t have much choice.”

  Maddie scanned the area. She listened. She didn’t hear a single car, not even in the distance. She didn’t hear anything except the faint sounds of the engine as it came to a rest.

  Hicks looked at her. “Beckman’s not too happy with me right now.”

  “What’d he say?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to repeat it.”

  Maddie unzipped her purse and pulled out her pistol. She checked to make sure it was loaded.

  “You know how to use that?” he asked.

  “Pretty well.”

  “Just don’t point it at an agent. Those will be the guys in Kevlar who show up in about fifteen minutes.” He opened the door. “They know you’re in the car here, but it still wouldn’t be good for you to wave that thing around.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “I noticed some tire tracks. I need to go take a look.”

  Maddie tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans and got out of the car. “I’ll help.”

  “You should stay here.”

  “Just a quick look. I’m a CSI, remember? You’d be foolish not to let me help you.”

  She stayed near the bushes as they hiked up the road a few yards. She spotted the tracks at the turnoff and crouched down. Hicks knelt beside her.

  “Looks like a pickup truck.”

  “A dualie,” she corrected. “And two other vehicles, either pickups or SUVs.”

  “What’s a dualie?”

  “One of those extra-large pickups, double tires on the back. See?” She pointed out the distinctive tread marks in the dirt.

  She took a few photos with her phone and stood up. “Bracewell has a dualie. But his aren’t the freshest tracks here. Someone else drove through this gate in the meantime.”

  She stepped over to another set of tire marks that was overlaid with the double-wide tracks. She glanced up at Hicks, who was busy texting info into his phone.

  “Tell them there have been at least four different vehicles in and out of here in the last two days, since we had that big rain.”

  Hicks didn’t say anything.

  “Which is a lot of traffic on a deer lease when it’s not even deer season,” she added.

  The agent’s hands froze around his phone. His gaze snapped to hers. “Back in the car. Now.” He grabbed her elbow and shoved her ahead of him. “I hear a truck.”

  Brian barely slowed for the curves as he sped down the highway. He wished he had his pickup, which was much better suited to this type of terrain.

  “Has he reported in?” Sam demanded over the phone.

  “Negative,” Brian said. “Last update from LeBlanc, they were on the highway.”

  Brian scanned the road in front of him now, looking for the exit. But if his GPS was worth shit—which he doubted—he had another five miles to go.

  “What about the hostage rescue team?” Sam asked.

  “Their ETA’s ten minutes. I might even beat them there.”

  “Okay, I’m pulling into to Mladovic’s neighborhood now. It’s just him and his wife home, according to the surveillance team. Let’s hope he comes in without a fight.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  The conversation was surreal. For months, Brian had dreamed of being part of the big takedown. Now it was happening without him, and he couldn’t care less. Sam could have the collar.

  Brian had his sights set on a new enemy: Bracewell. The key to all of this. He’d abused his power. He’d probably helped kill those girls and destroy evidence. And with every minute that ticked by, Brian became more convinced that he was the gunman who’d put Maddie in his crosshairs.

  Brian had some vicious thoughts in his head, but he pushed them aside so he could focus on the most important objective: getting Maddie out of harm’s way.

  “Okay, we’re at the house now. I’m out, Beck.”

  Brian spotted the turnoff and slammed on the brakes. “Be careful,” he told Sam.

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  Maddie sat in the car, alone, scanning the area around her. Her anxiety mounted with every minute that crawled by. No word from the team. No Hicks. Nothing but heavy, nerve-wracking silence.

  She pictured Jennifer Murphy staring out her kitchen window with a heart that was slowly cracking in two. She pictured her looking at all the yellow ribbons that were meant to be hopeful but by now must seem cruel. If Jennifer were here right now, she’d scour every inch of this land, every hill and every hollow, no matter what dangers were waiting for her.

  Maddie yearned to get out of the car. But Hicks had told her to stay. Commanded her.

  She looked down at the gun clutched in her hand. She had no formal training. No jurisdiction.

  She peered through the windshield again. Her palms were wet. Her heart seemed to be beating a hundred times a second.

  If Brian found out, he’d be furious. Brian cared about her, maybe even loved her. If anything happened to her, he’d find a way to blame himself.

  Cabrera had ordered her to stay put, too.

  Maddie gazed out the window and felt her heart drumming inside her body. She wasn’t Brian’s wife. She wasn’t Cabrera’s subordinate. But she was someone’s mother. That label was branded on her heart forever, no matter what.

  They don’t need Jolene anymore. They’re going to kill her if they haven’t already.

  Maddie got out of the car. She eased the door shut and stood still to listen. She glanced around to get her bearings.

  Slowly, she crept deeper into the brush until she encountered the barbed-wire fence surrounding the property. Careful not to snag her hair, she ducked through it. She felt a rush of adrenaline. She’d crossed a line. There was no going back.

  Maddie eased through the foliage, staying close to the evergreens for better cover. She darted her gaze around, looking for any sign of a person or a dog or a vehicle.

  A wind whipped up and shifted the branches around her. Something silver caught the light about a hundred yards away. She moved closer. She stared at it through the leaves.

  The silver flashed again, and she recognized it. It was a glimmer of hope.

  CHAPTER 25

  Brian’s blood went cold when he saw the car.

  Empty.

  He pulled into the trees and parked, then jumped out with his gun in hand. No sign of Maddie or Hicks. Nothing.

  The car was unlocked, and he reached in to pop the trunk. He held his breath as he went to check . . .

  No blood, no bodies.

  No Kevlar.

  He frowned down at the trunk and closed it. Wherever they’d gone, they’d taken the time to suit up.

  He cursed under his breath as he moved toward the fence. What the hell was she thinking? He’d known this would happen the second she told him about this deer lease. She was going to go nosing around, and screw anyone who tried to stop her, including him. She was a CSI and a mother, and besides that, she was stubborn as hell. If there was a chance in a billion that Jolene was here alive, then no amount of logic could keep her away.

  Frustration and fear tightened his chest.

  Brian closed his eyes and listened carefully. The air was still and quiet. He didn’t hear a car or a bird or anything. He didn’t hear the whump-whump of a chopper or the low hum of an armored van. He wasn’t sure how he’d beaten everyone here, but it probably had to do with his triple-digit speed on that highway.

  Brian pulled out his cell and sent Maddie his second text in the last ten minutes. He stared down at his phone. Still nothing.

  He could wait for his team, as planned, or he could go looking for them. He knew what he should do, and he also knew he wasn’t going to do it.

  Brian waded into the bushes and ducked through the fence.

  Right away, he spotted tracks in the woods. One set could have been anybody’s, inc
luding Hicks. Another set looked small and feminine and might belong to Maddie. Brian followed the footprints, hoping none of Mladovic’s goons had the slightest bit of military training. It wouldn’t take much to pick up this trail out here. Besides leaving footprints—which, thank God, were now pretty well obscured by dead leaves—she’d also left telltale breaks in the tree branches from where she’d pushed through the brush.

  Accident? He didn’t know. If she’d been forcefully hauled away, she might have been trying to leave a trail for the HR team that was about to swoop in.

  On the other hand, maybe she hadn’t thought about covering her tracks when she’d moved through the area. Maybe she’d been thinking about something else, such as the aluminum camper Brian saw looming up ahead at the far end of a clearing. A place to stash a hostage? Possibly. It was the first thing that popped into his mind, and Maddie’s, too, he’d bet.

  A noise to the east had him whirling around. He heard the clang of metal and several male voices. They were muffled, and as Brian moved through the woods, he saw the reason. Beside a dense clump of trees was a dilapidated barn. The structure was gray and weathered and missing about half of the slats. Brian caught the movement of people inside and eased closer for a better look.

  He crept through the bushes, wishing for some woodland cammies. An M-4 would be nice, too, but he only had his Glock.

  Three men. One he recognized as Anatoli, smoking and leaning against the back of a large pickup. Another sat on a rusted-out oil drum that someone had turned on its side. Brian did a double-take. Vlad?

  He’d been so sure it was Volansky’s charred remains spread out on that table at the Delphi Center. What was it Sam had said? Looks like he got himself fired.

  But there was Vlad, in the flesh, swigging beer and yapping away on his cell phone. So who was the corpse? Another one of Mladovic’s disposable goons?

  A squeak of metal pulled Brian’s attention to the far side of the barn, where someone was climbing out of an old green pickup. He stepped out of the shadows . . .

  Bracewell.

  Brian’s chest burned, and his fingers tightened around his pistol grip. Bracewell was on his cell phone, and he finished up the call and tossed the phone through the open window of the larger truck. Brian figured the truck was his, because he couldn’t see the good sheriff riding around the county in the piece-of-shit clunker he’d just climbed out of. Brian looked more closely and noticed the old green truck was up on jacks, and the two front tires were missing.

  Bracewell barked some orders, but the men didn’t move.

  Brian scanned the barn, looking for any sign of Maddie or Hicks. Nothing.

  The low growl of an engine reached him. Brian stepped behind a tree and watched as a dust-coated white SUV roared up the road and came to a halt in the doorway of the barn. All the men snapped to attention as Mladovic climbed out.

  Brian watched in shock. Either the takedown had gone to shit, or he’d slipped through his surveillance. The Doctor barked some orders in Serbian, and Vlad and the others sprang into action, opening the SUV’s cargo doors and dragging out a pair of tires. They rolled them toward the jacked-up truck.

  Bracewell turned and spat tobacco juice on the ground. “I’m gonna want a piece of that.”

  Mladovic’s face was obscured now, but Brian could see from the sheriff’s reaction that he hadn’t gotten the answer he wanted.

  “Yeah, but this isn’t what we agreed on.” Bracewell got up in the Doctor’s grille. “You said two bodies. Not three. I got a family here. I can’t just hop down to Mexico and leave my shit behind for everyone else to clean up. Fifty K, or you can forget it.”

  More words were exchanged, and Brian’s gaze veered to the truck, where Vlad was putting on a tire that was probably loaded with cash and headed for the border. Mladovic was smuggling money down, which meant he was leaving.

  Suddenly, the argument ceased. Even from a distance, Brian recognized all the signs of a fight brewing. Mladovic stepped closer and said something softly. Bracewell jerked out his pistol and fired off a shot. Anatoli dropped like a bag of bricks.

  “That’s four bodies.” He aimed the gun at Mladovic’s chest. “We going for five?”

  Maddie ducked behind a tree and crouched low. She clutched her gun in her hand and gasped for breath. She was nearly hyperventilating.

  That had definitely been a gunshot.

  She had to get out of here. She had to get Jolene out of here. But where was Hicks? She pulled her phone out to text him and stared down at the screen.

  Three urgent messages, all from Brian.

  And a fourth message from Hicks, but it was blank.

  Her stomach plummeted.

  God, what did that mean? She glanced around desperately, looking for Hicks, looking for landmarks. She spotted a clump of oak trees beside a large white boulder. Not exactly a landmark but close enough. She sent Brian a message, then moved deeper into the brush to wait.

  She was shaking, head to toe. Her T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, and it trickled down her spine. She felt as though a giant fist was squeezing the air from her lungs as she pictured Jolene, motionless on that brown cot.

  Please, please, please.

  Something grabbed her arm. Maddie gasped and whirled around as Brian’s hand clamped around her pistol.

  “Careful with that.”

  “Oh, my God.” She slumped against him. But her relief lasted about a nanosecond, because he was towing her deeper into the woods, where he pulled her into a crouch.

  “Where’s Hicks?” His voice was low, and his face looked intense.

  “I don’t know. He went to look around. I left the car. Then I saw the camper. Jolene—” The words tumbled out of her in a rush. “Then I heard gunshots.”

  He gripped her arm. “When? When did you hear gunshots?”

  “I—” She thought back. “It was only one, I think. I heard it a minute ago. After you texted me.”

  He started to stand up, but she pulled him back down. “Brian, she’s here! In the camper! I saw her—”

  “Jolene’s here?”

  “Yes!”

  “And she’s alive?”

  “Yes.” Maddie’s throat tightened. “But she looks so weak. Or maybe she’s drugged or something. But we have to get her. Bracewell’s here now, and you said they’re going to kill her. We have to get her out of there.”

  He pulled her to her feet. “Show me.”

  “The guard’s gone!” Maddie hissed, pulling him through the woods. “Earlier, there was a man stationed there.”

  They neared the edge of the trees, and Brian jerked her back and pushed her behind him. He eyed the camper.

  “She’s on a cot against the far wall.” Maddie looked up at him with a plea in her eyes. “I saw her through the window. I think they cuffed her to the bed or something.”

  “I’ll handle it. You get back to the car.”

  She gazed up at him but didn’t move.

  “Maddie—”

  “Don’t be stupid. At least let me stand watch while you go in there.”

  “What are you going to do if someone approaches?”

  “I don’t know. Shoot him?”

  Brian gritted his teeth. He hated that she was here. And he hated that she was going to cover his ass while he attempted this rescue mission. But a man had just been murdered in cold blood. Everything was coming to a head, and his backup was nowhere.

  Brian pulled her into a clump of sagebrush and positioned her out of sight of the other buildings.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered.

  He decided on the stealth approach and slipped around the back of the camper, where there was a small window. Too small for a man his size, or even Hicks’s. He crept around the side. He noticed the gap between the flimsy door and the curved shell of the camper. Gun raised, he flattened himself against the side and eased open the door. He peered inside.

  The camper was empty.

  Pop!

  Brian
dropped to his knees.

  Pop! Pop!

  He lunged for the bushes. Maddie was racing toward him, full speed, eyes blazing with fear.

  “Go!” he yelled, grabbing her hand and pulling her out in front of him so he could shield her with his body. They shoved their way through branches, and Brian pushed her ahead, not daring even to attempt a shot until she was out of bullet range.

  “Go!” he yelled, then darted a glance behind him.

  A bullet buzzed by his ear, and Brian felt a surge of anger. He lifted his gun and fired it at the blur of movement ducking behind a tree.

  Hit! A howl came up from the ground.

  An engine roared to life. Mladovic’s SUV shot back from the barn, then raced forward, a streak of white between tree trunks.

  Was Jolene in that vehicle? Was Hicks?

  He turned to look for Maddie, and she was crouched behind a giant oak tree.

  “Stay here!”

  He doubled back to the site of the downed gunman. He spotted Bracewell on the ground, clutching his knee and writhing in pain. Blood seeped through his fingers, and he was making keening noises.

  Brian spotted the gun nearby and kicked it away. He pointed his Glock at Bracewell’s chest.

  “Where’s Jolene Murphy?”

  The sheriff’s eyes flew open. He stared at Brian with pure hatred.

  “Where’s our agent?”

  “Fuck . . . you,” he gasped.

  Brian yanked the man’s bloody hands behind him and slapped on a pair of handcuffs. He caught movement in his peripheral vision as Maddie walked up and stopped beside the sheriff.

  She hauled back and kicked him in the knee. Bracewell howled like a stuck pig.

  “Where is she?” She aimed her pistol between his legs. “I’ll shoot that thing right off.”

  “Vlad has her,” he choked out.

  Maddie looked at Brian as a grumble went up near the barn. The old green pickup shot out from the doors and disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

  “Shit.”

  Maddie dropped to her knees beside the sheriff and dug a set of keys from his pocket. “His truck.” She looked at Brian. “Let’s go!”