by Jeanne Adams
“Close, but no cigar,” Ana said, using her tone to remind Callahan that they were working to save Dav. “The S’es are the last letter of his first and last name, and the D and M are his mother’s first initial and the initial of her maiden name. A lot less obvious than DG would be, and no one but us would connect it with him.”
“Interesting.”
“I’ve got blood,” Holden said suddenly. He jerked open his kit, swabbed something on the plane’s floor and checked it with a small test strip on which he’d dabbed the swab.
“Human.” He offered the test flat for them to see the instant results. “But there isn’t much of it. Not enough for a bullet wound or anything life threatening.”
“Any other initials?” Ana asked, moving toward them, looking along the same wall where Dav’s initials had been scratched.
Holden whipped out a penlight, leaning into the wall where the marks were scratched. “Got some,” he said in eager triumph. “EY.”
“Is it scratched through?” Ana demanded, leaning in as well, straining to see the marks. “Or defaced in any way?”
“No.” Holden was looking at her as if he’d done something wrong. “Should it be?”
“EY equals Carrie McCray,” Callahan supplied, understanding dawning on her face even as the worry eased off her features. “I’m guessing no scratch through means they were both still alive when they landed.”
“Right,” Ana said, feeling the pressure in her chest lighten, just a fraction.
They were in the right place. On the right trail. And Dav and Carrie had been alive when they’d landed here in this plane. Her mysterious informant had been on the mark, and there were no blood pools or bodies on the property, or the dogs would have alerted them. “You hearing this, Gates?”
“Yeah,” he said, and his relief was palpable. “We’re on the right lead.”
Holden didn’t wait for that; he busied himself pulling prints and samples, scanning all the data into a portable as he went. Dav could afford the latest and best technology, and for once it was getting a workout. Holden moved from place to place, efficiently dusting, swabbing and pulling prints wherever he found them, following the beeping, morphing trail all over the plane.
“Perimeter secure, boss,” she heard the stations report in. She and Holden left Callahan pulling the comm data and moved to the other plane.
“Uh, Mrs. Bromley?”
“Ana,” Ana corrected, noting that he’d covered his mic. She did the same.
“Yes. Um, Ana, is Callahan always this...” he hesitated.
“Temperamental?”
“I was gonna say hostile, but yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
She smiled. “No. She’s feeling guilty about Declan.”
Understanding and disappointment flashed one right after the other over Holden’s boyish features. “Got it. They together?”
“Not yet, maybe not at all. But she thinks she’d have kept them both safe if she’d been on duty.”
“Don’t we all,” he said, and dropped his hand off the mic. They moved to the other plane, leaving Callahan to do her work. Ana wondered how Damon, Queller, Thompson and Georgiade were doing. They’d all been hurt badly enough that they’d had to stay behind. She hoped they were on the mend. At last word, Declan had still not come out of his coma.
She also wondered about Cal, Carrie’s former gallery manager. When they left, he’d yet to be located. Bax had given them a brief update on his search for Inez’s killer when he called to say he hadn’t located the gallery’s former manager. Most of his leads were turning out to be one dead end after another.
“This plane is passenger,” Holden noted, interrupting her thoughts. “Gonna be lots more prints on this one.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
Gates met her at the bottom of the steps. “Passenger plane came in second. That means someone followed after they took Dav and Carrie out of here in the cargo. Dav’s using every trick he and I practiced, but Carrie is a wild card for him. We ran a lot of simulations, but none of the sims included another hostage, especially not a woman he cared about.” He grimly looked around the small compound. She read frustration and something else in his gaze. “This is off, somehow, including the watcher. I’m still feeling like we’re playing more than one game here and it’s really, really pissing me off.”
Ana couldn’t have agreed more. “It’s not standard mercenary practice to throw away a chance for ransom. First, we haven’t heard anything else after the initial contact with proof of life.” she said, holding up her index finger to indicate that point. “Second, the ransom’s in the holding account, but not collected. We know that if it’s Niko, he’s not the thinker behind this op but he’d collect, I think, shift it and send us looking somewhere for Dav.” She ticked off a third finger. “Third, mercenaries don’t leave watchers at a place they’re not coming back to.” She balled her fist. “Last but not least, our anonymous tipster was a woman, and said she was unconnected to whatever’s going on here.”
Ana glanced around and suppressed an atavistic shudder. “You’re right, Gates. This is way off.”
He was about to reply when his sat-comm beeped. His shoulders straightened a bit as he read the incoming message, but his frown deepened. “The ransom’s rolling from the holding account to an account in the Caymans. We got info back on the proof of life. Initial tests say it’s Dav’s and Carrie’s hair, but the gold ring on the gold chain has more than Dav’s DNA on it. They’re working on that. There’s a coat button too. Queller said he recognized the button as Dav’s,” Gates said, then drew in a breath. “The ring, if it’s what I think it is, was his mother’s. He never takes it off the chain around his neck.”
Ana took that in, wondering about the ring, and the fact Gates’s body language said there was one long painful story behind it. “Why’d they wait three days, Gates?” She frowned. The “off” vibe increased in her mind, and her frustration rose. Real kidnappers got their demands in early, kept hope alive to ensure cooperation and payment.
“More skewed activities. We’re getting too many options and too many leads.” He shot her a sharp look. “Too many leads. That means either too many hands in this, or a deliberate distraction. Smart as they’ve been so far, it could be either. Long-term planning is written all over this deal.” He said it as a complaint, but there was a dark degree of admiration as well. Whoever had designed this op and carried it out knew their stuff.
Ana admired it too, in a way, but put that out of her mind. They had immediate work. “No vehicle here.” She pointed out the absence. “That means they’re probably still in-country or leaving another way.” She glanced toward the runway. “The watcher says they’re in-country and coming back here.”
“Does it? I don’t know.” Gates rubbed at his faintly bearded cheek. “None of this makes sense for mercs.”
“Good point. So, if there’s a watcher from some other source and they know it, they won’t be back. If they think they’re safe, they may. We should set a watch of our own.” She looked around to be sure Franklin couldn’t hear her. He was sensitive about his dogs. “So, how come the dogs didn’t give us an alert on the guy?”
“Downwind.” Gates paused, scanning the lush green surrounding the small compound. “Whoever it is, they’re good.”
“Interesting. And weird. Why would they leave a watcher behind? They couldn’t know we were coming. Given that, the watcher was here to see if they came back, or who else might show,” Ana remarked. “If the watcher is working for the opposition, whoever that is, with the mercs in the middle, we may have just screwed everything.”
“I don’t think this can get much more screwed up,” Gates replied, and Ana winced.
“Don’t say that. There’s always another way to screw something up, especially this sort of deal.”
“You going to tell me about that phone call? Obviously it sent us on the right track and to the right place.” Gates watched her closely, and she coul
d tell he was waiting—had been waiting for a while now—for an answer. She also knew that what she was about to tell him was really going to sound like she’d taken them on the wildest of goose chases. If it hadn’t panned out...
But it had, so she told him.
“The woman said she knew Dav, knew us. She said she’d known about the deal last year and had been involved, in a peripheral way.” When Gates started to speak, she headed him off by continuing. “Hear me out, and remember, we got here and it’s the right place.”
The mutinous look on his face shifted to thoughtfulness as she went on. “She said that she’d gained word of an active contract out on Dav, one that was turned down. There were reasons why it was declined, she said, but that I didn’t need to know them. What I did need to know was that Dav had been flown to Belize, and he’d been dumped at a site in the mountains, near a ruin. She said that she would send me a text, sometime today, with the latitude and longitude.”
“That’s it? That’s all you had?” He looked incredulous now, and shook his head. “So between that and the plane sightings, you pinpointed the airstrip.”
“Yep,” she said, knowing how idiotic it sounded.
“Holy hell,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “No wonder it feels like there are more irons in this fire than we can account for.”
“There’s more,” she admitted.
“Oh, crap. More? What?”
“Hines. He’s down here somewhere too. Remember, McGuire was tracking him here. If he knows we’re here, or has someone tracking our movements in and out of California, he may be here, gunning for both of us as well. Given that, McGuire may be down here too.”
“Jeez, just what we need. More ex-Agency help and hindrance than we can shake a palm tree over.” He slapped at his legs with the gloves he’d been wearing. “Something’s biting me.”
“Me too,” she agreed, but she’d put on bug spray, so it wasn’t too annoying yet. “I’ve got some spray in the car. The locals said we’d need it. Some kind of local and very bloodthirsty gnat.”
He sighed. “What now?”
“Gather data and wait for someone to direct us, I think.” She hated every word she said, hated knowing that they were completely dependent on an outside, unknown source for intelligence and direction. Knowing too, that there was some larger game to which they weren’t privy. It made her feel like a chess piece and she hated that.
Frustrated, she turned from watching the swaying trees to looking at the planes. She saw Callahan coming out of the cargo plane. She looked pissed.
Fear and anger curled in Ana’s gut. She could tell Callahan had found something that was going to twist things up more than they already were.
“Looks like it’s getting weirder by the minute,” she muttered to Gates, drawing his attention to Callahan, whose angry strides brought her to them within seconds.
“Crap,” Gates muttered.
Callahan strode up. Her headset was off, her mic dangling. She covered it with one hand and motioned them to do the same.
Holding up an electronic reader, she said, “I think we got a mole.”
Carrie had no idea how much time had passed when they awoke. “There is no way in hell I’m putting those clothes back on until they’ve been rinsed out,” she declared, looking beyond Dav to their scattered garments.
“You are right about that,” he muttered, distaste written on his face. “I fear my trousers will never be the same.”
“When we get out of here, I’m burning all of it.”
“I will get you a match to light the fire,” he offered, bending to gather up their clothes. “Until then, I guess we will wash things, yes?”
“Yes. Better wet than filthy, I think.”
“I think the pants will not stand the water,” he said, holding up the beautifully tailored wool. “As dirty as they are, they fit now. If they—” He stopped, obviously searching for the word.
“Shrink?”
“Yes, thank you. If they shrink, even a little, they will not fit me.”
“True. Mine might not either,” she realized, plucking her underwear and his T-shirt from the pile. “Let’s set those aside, and my sweater such as it is.” She held up the torn garment, but smiled at it. He’d torn it when they made love and that made it precious. She decided she wouldn’t burn that, if they got out alive.
She saw his grimace and peered at him, trying to make out, in the gloom, what was bothering him.
“Your hand,” she said. “How bad is it?”
He shrugged, but she didn’t let him get away with it. “Give me the clothes,” she said, holding out her hand for them, brooking no argument. “I’ll get them rinsed out, then we’ll take a look at your hand.”
All the while she rinsed their things, she worried. He’d favored the hand a lot, but then, when they’d made love, he’d held her up, used it as if it were uninjured. Was that why it was paining him now?
If his condition was really serious, what should they do? What could they do?
All the unanswered questions plagued her as she laid out underwear and shirts on the rock ledge to dry a bit. The cave was moist near the waterfall, but really, only there.
Shivering a bit, she knelt next to him. He’d watched her, his hands in his lap, as she worked. Now, the sight of him, nude, with five days’ growth of beard, stirred her blood, but she pushed the desire back for the moment, focused on his hand. He’d taken the rag off it so she could see it.
“It isn’t good, Carrie-mou. There is much bruising and blood under the skin.” He held the hand up and she turned on the flashlight so she could examine it. In the harsh, bright light, it looked nightmarish. Purple and angry red, it was lumpy and had to be massively painful. She could see the torn skin where the bone had protruded. It oozed blood, now that the bandaging was off, and everything about the hand looked wrong.
“It’s bad, Dav.”
“It is, yes,” he agreed. “But there is nothing to be done right now. We should get dressed, even if we are wet, and keep moving. If this goes from bad to worse”—he indicated his hand—“I could get feverish and maybe delirious.”
“That would be worse,” she said, recognizing the vast understatement the words implied.
“Yes. It could be fatal, in these caves, and I will not allow my brother’s jealousy, these games”—he spat the words in angry frustration—“this family idiocy to cost you your life. What happens to me is not nearly as important.”
She felt her own anger rise. How dare he? “What makes you think you get to be all martyrlike and put me up on a pedestal? I think you’re just as damn important as I am, you idiot.”
“Not to me,” he snarled back. “Nothing is more important than you.”
The words of caring, delivered in such irritation, took a few minutes to register.
Dav had already said he cared about her, but she’d heard that before. Her late husband had been quick to say he loved her, always. He’d been especially free with tossing the words around when he’d been successful wooing some intern or another artist.
This irritable declaration that she was important somehow meant more than any declaration of love.
Rocking back on her heels, she stared at him.
“What?” He scowled at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You mean that, don’t you?” His irritated statement was so absurd, she had to laugh.
“Of course. I do not say anything I don’t mean. I don’t have to.” He smiled a bit. “Unless I’m negotiating; then perhaps I will not be so truthful.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“No, Carrie-mou, it isn’t. It’s merely the truth and I find it annoying that you don’t believe me. I have been attracted to you for years. You are important to me.” He used his uninjured hand to tuck her drying hair behind her ear. “Life is too short to lie about that sort of thing. And our lives, right now? They may be very short indeed, so why be false, eh?”
She looked away
from the intensity of his gaze, his sincere smile.
He was right.
Something within her crumbled and fell away, a barrier, a fearful wall that kept her trapped in the past, so sure that anyone, everyone she trusted would betray her. Dav hadn’t lied to her, he hadn’t said he loved her, just that she was important to him, that he was attracted to her.
She let the smile blossom in the gloom, but not where he could see. It was fairly obvious that they were attracted to one another. God, she felt so good. Her body ached from the unaccustomed exercise, both desperate and sexual, but somehow, unaccountably, she felt ... good.
She caught his hand, pressed a kiss into his palm. “You’re right.”
“Right? Yes.” He leaned in, caught her face, kissed her softly. “And will you believe me, later, when I tell you that you are important to me? When we are free? Or will you doubt it all again?”
She had to laugh. He’d caught her there. “I don’t know. I think,” she said, feeling her way, exploring the new, free sensation in her chest, in her gut, “that I can try to open my mind enough to consider it.”
His brilliant smile lit the darkness. “Good. We will work from there. Now, let us pick another tunnel and keep moving. Somewhere out there, Gates is looking for us.” His smile faded. “And so is my brother.”
She nodded, and pulled on her underthings. They were still wet, but as clammy as they felt, they were at least moderately clean. The T-shirt he’d given her was stained, but again, still cleaner than it had been, so she pulled it over her head. She’d shaken out her sweater, doing her best to get as much of the dirt and dust out of it as possible.
Dav had done the same and they were both trying to get the worst dirt off his pants and her skirt.
“I think this is an impossible task,” he said, giving it up and tugging the pants over his legs. “These are just horrible, I must say,” he commented as he fastened the hook and the belt. His look of fastidious distaste was amusing, but since she was experiencing the same thing, she empathized.
“Considering the conditions, I’m glad it isn’t worse.” She repressed a shudder as she too put on her skirt and slid her feet into her clammy, dirty shoes.