Fatal Mistake--A Novel

by Susan Sleeman

  She stepped off, making a beeline for the group of techs who lingered outside a small rental truck serving as a temporary evidence locker. Brynn would supervise the work and make sure they marked each piece of evidence with a number, recorded the details in the official logbook, and took copious photographs before properly packaging and shipping the evidence back to the FBI’s only lab in Quantico, Virginia. Cal wished they weren’t breaking for Max’s meeting, as they already had a long night ahead of them in reviewing the evidence to determine the most probative leads, but it couldn’t be helped.

  On his way to the detective who’d taken witness names, Cal spotted the Knights’ cyber expert, Kaci North, frantically waving at him from behind fluttering yellow tape cordoning off the scene. Her whole body vibrated with anticipation like she wanted to hurdle the barriers to get to him. She wouldn’t, though. She might be their computer expert, but she knew better than to unnecessarily enter a scene and potentially contaminate the area.

  Cal made his way over to her, ignoring the callouts from reporters pleading for details. When he reached her, a self-satisfied smile settled on her lips.

  “I found her.” She pushed large black glasses up the bridge of her nose to stare at him.

  Cal lowered his voice. “Her as in Tara?”

  “Yes,” Kaci said, that smile widening. “I have finally found your missing Tara Parrish.”

  Chapter 5

  An adrenaline rush urged Cal to take action, but he forced himself to calm down before he said something the people surrounding them had no business hearing. He looked around the area, searching for much-needed privacy for this conversation with Kaci. His gaze landed on County’s command truck.

  “Follow me,” he said, and marched to the vehicle. He took both stairs in one leap and heard Kaci follow.

  A uniformed deputy sat behind a console running the length of the vehicle about the size of a package delivery truck. He looked up, a question in his gaze.

  Cal eyed him and held out his credentials. “Leave us.”

  The deputy with a gleaming bald head and stern expression watched him for a moment, but then stood and brushed past them before stomping down the stairs. Cal tried to be nicer to local officers, as the country’s well-being depended on local law enforcement, but right now Cal didn’t have the time or patience for anything but obtaining details on Tara Parrish’s location. And he didn’t even have patience to wait for that. He spun on Kaci.

  “Tell me where she is,” he demanded without apology for his pushy behavior.

  “Her PO Box is in Dufur, Oregon,” Kaci replied. “It’s a small town outside the Mount Hood National Forest. She’s working at the Fivemile Butte Lookout Tower as a fire lookout.”

  Cal blinked a few times, processing the news. “Oregon isn’t on her list of places she’s vacationed and doesn’t fit her pattern.”

  “No, but you have to admit a fire tower is a perfect place to go to ground.” Kaci took off her glasses and settled them on top of her head, pushing back gleaming dark hair. “She lives in the tower full-time, not meeting face-to-face with people, and she only comes to town to get supplies and use the post office.”

  “You’re sure it’s Tara?”

  Kaci bobbed her head. “The postal worker in Dufur ID’d a picture of her.”

  “Wait a minute. Back up.” Cal took a step closer. “You have the worker identifying Tara, but how did you find her in the first place?”

  A cocky grin slid across Kaci’s lips. An expert in cyber investigations, she knew her skills were second to none. “Remember I told you about Etsy.”

  Cal nodded. “The online site where Tara once sold her animal photos. You said her account was inactive.”

  “That account is, but she’s selling landscape pictures under a new account. Not in her name, of course.”

  “So how’d you track her?” Cal flashed up his hand. “And if this is one of those geek kind of things, dumb it down for me, okay?”

  “It isn’t complicated at all, and even you can understand it.” She chuckled and didn’t seem the least bit put-upon to explain yet one more bit of technology. “With the waitress jobs Tara’s been taking, we all figured she’d need extra money to live on, right? So I took that a step further. As an amateur photographer, she successfully sold photos before. What better way to make money anonymously than selling pictures again? I figured she’d have an online storage account for her pictures so she could access and sell from anywhere.”

  “And did she?”

  Kaci nodded. “I found a link on the desktop computer in her row house. So I cracked her password and found a whole slew of marketable landscape pictures. I had my team regularly upload these pictures into Google’s reverse image search. Finally the search engine hit on one, which led me to her new Etsy account.”

  “Explain the Google thing.”

  “On Google’s image page, you can click on the camera icon in the search box. It then gives you the option to upload a picture. After you do, Google runs a search and returns links for any web address where the image has been posted online.”

  “Really?” he asked, trying to make sense of her statement. “So I could upload a picture of myself and Google would find it if someone’s posted it online?”

  “Yes, but one caveat. Google’s Internet bots would have to crawl the Net and index the files from the picture sites. The bots don’t crawl every website, and the ones they do crawl aren’t necessarily done in the same time span. And webmasters can use their robots.txt file to block Google bots, too.”

  “Okay, now you’re getting into terms I’m not familiar with. I get the gist of what you’re saying, so please stop before you make my head spin.”

  “Aw.” She laughed. “What fun is there in that?”

  He grinned and had to admit smiling felt good, until the thought of going to Oregon and surprising Tara—seeing her again—took it away. It would be no hardship to lay eyes on this woman who was so vital to his case, but she was also the woman who hadn’t left his thoughts for three months and not only for professional reasons. Still, that wouldn’t stop him from traveling to Oregon to get the information he needed from her. Not for one second.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on this?” he asked.

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve been so frustrated with all the dead ends that I didn’t want to get your hopes up if this didn’t pan out.”

  “Well, it did, and I owe you big-time,” he said sincerely.

  “And you know I’ll collect, right?”

  He nodded, but his mind had already transitioned to his next move. Since he had no way of knowing if Tara still resided in Oregon, he’d go alone and leave the team in Dallas to work the scene. If he did locate her, he’d call in the Knights to assist in her transport back to D.C.

  He checked his watch. Nearly two o’clock. It would take an hour or so for their pilot to be ready for takeoff, and then a four-hour flight to Portland, giving him plenty of time to get his emotions in check so when he came face-to-face with Tara again, he didn’t let the frustrations over her taking off on him interfere in his hunt for Keeler.

  “Okay.” He clapped his hands. “Since Max is in town, he can take charge here, and I’ll leave for Portland right away.”

  “One thing, though,” Kaci added, this time frowning. “We both know from tracking Keeler that he has strong tech skills. So you also have to know if I located Tara, Keeler can find her, too.”

  * * *

  Mount Hood National Forest, Oregon

  8:05 p.m.

  The oppressive, sultry night settled over the Mount Hood National Forest. Tara raised her binoculars and ran them over the trees. She was on alert 24/7. She had to be. Not only as her new job as a forest fire lookout, but also in search for Oren before he made good on his warning to kill her.

  She rested her elbows on the rough deck railing surrounding her thirty-foot-tall tower and scanned the horizon still warm wit
h the sun’s sinking rays. Finding the area free from smoke, she dropped her focus to the ground and ran the binoculars along the edge of the clearing below.

  Sudden movement in the brush sent a jolt of fear racing through her body. She zoomed in and found a deer, a smaller five-point buck edging through the trees. Fitting for the Fivemile Butte Lookout Tower, she supposed.

  She blew out a breath and leaned over the railing to complete her search on the south side of the platform. The long scar on her stomach pulled tight, drawing her thoughts to Agent Cal Riggins’s rescue as happened every time the now-familiar ache ran through her abdomen. If he hadn’t shown up moments after Oren had shot her, she would’ve bled out.

  As a former SEAL, Agent Riggins possessed extensive first aid skills. At least he’d told her he’d been a SEAL. He certainly had the body and intensity that she associated with a SEAL, and with the exceptional team he belonged to, she supposed.

  She owed her life to him gallantly sweeping in on a chopper. He’d only wanted her help in return. Easy, right? Wrong. She’d planned to help him, but then Oren had shown up at the hospital, and she couldn’t stay even if she hadn’t sufficiently recovered and getting around was painful.

  She still wanted to help, though. She would do anything to assist in finding Oren, but no matter how hard she tried, the night at the pump house remained fuzzy. Who knew, maybe the terror from Oren’s threat kept her mind locked down. She couldn’t come up with details needed to help find him, but his visit? That she remembered. Clearly. His eyes, the hatred, the vengeance, all sent a shudder raking over her body.

  She slipped her finger under a thick red rubber band circling her wrist, snapped it, and let the resounding sting take her attention and stave off her fear. She’d discovered this pattern breaker on the Internet and used it to help let go of her anxiety and choose a new behavior. She pulled again.

  Snap. The pain sizzled up her arm, but the anxiety sat on her shoulders like the weight of Mount Hood in the distance.

  She should have known one snap wouldn’t work today—the first of the month, Oren’s scheduled day to detonate a bomb. After moving to Dallas to make it harder for Oren to find her, she’d discovered he’d killed a coworker in Atlanta, likely because he couldn’t get to her, and she didn’t want the same thing to happen in Dallas. So she’d warned her coworkers at Pecos Palace and moved to Oregon. But she kept fearing for their lives, so yesterday she’d risked the FBI finding her and made a computer call to their hotline, begging them to protect her friends in Dallas.

  If only she’d caught on to Oren’s plan sooner.

  Snap.

  He would likely detonate a bomb today. Who would he kill?

  Snap. Snap.

  Hopefully Agent Riggins and his team were in Dallas with her friends.

  Snap. Snap. Snap.

  The rubber band failed to calm her for the first time ever. Maybe finishing her search would help. She moved to the other side of the tower. Perched on a hill that fell off into a rocky cliff, the tower couldn’t be approached from the west side. Still, she lifted the binoculars to sweep the area, looking for any hint of smoke. Black meant structures or vehicles were burning. Sometimes pines thick with resin would first burn dark. White smoke signaled lighter fuels like grass, twigs, and pine needles.

  No fires in sight, but she wouldn’t end her sweep until she made certain Oren wasn’t lurking nearby. She left nothing to chance anymore. She trusted no one and questioned everything. Even FBI agents. They disappeared when needed. She now planned each move. Calculated each step. No more mistakes. Finding the bombs and running had almost been fatal. Another mistake could cost her life.

  She shifted and her view landed on Mount Hood, the top barely peppered with snow due to a dry spring and warmer-than-normal summer temperatures. Heavy clouds clung to the peak, but the forecast didn’t hold rain. A cool breeze drifted across the deck as her binoculars traveled farther west, landing on headlights slinking into the driveway, the vehicle coming to a stop at the gate about a quarter mile out.

  She zoomed the lens closer, but in the fading light she couldn’t make out the driver sitting behind the wheel.

  Oren?

  Was it really him?

  Only authorized forestry personnel could open the gate, but a simple lock wouldn’t stop Oren. Nothing would.

  She had no time to waste. She had to move. Now!

  She raced inside the cabin and grabbed the bag she’d prepared for a day such as this. She’d run the escape drill several times, and she went on autopilot. At twenty miles per hour, the top speed at which any vehicle could take the pitted drive, it took a minute to reach the tower. Add unlocking the gate, getting out, punching in the code, lifting the lock, getting back into the car, then making the drive, and that equaled four minutes at a minimum. She could collect her bag and rifle and get down three flights of stairs to take cover in her blind in the woods in two minutes flat, well before anyone spotted her.

  She snatched the rifle hanging by the door before hitting the circuit breaker for the outside light, dousing the area in a dusky haze. She bolted for the stairs. Her pulse raced as she descended, one foot after the other landing on the metal treads by rote memory, sure and swift like she’d practiced. She counted them down, fifteen to each landing, times three.

  She hit the ground hard, and a puff of gritty dust filtered into the air. Her breathing accelerated, and she silently crept across the flat land. Over dormant grass dotted with weeds. Past the picnic table and fire pit. The outhouse.

  She slipped into the camouflaged hunting blind she’d staked at the edge of the woods and secured the fabric door before rolling up the opening meant for targeting and firing a weapon at an animal. She lifted her binoculars into the opening.

  The light waned, the sky now purple and ominous. She’d scanned down the drive toward the car. A dark fog colored her vision, but she saw no one behind the wheel.

  He’s on his way.

  Adrenaline spiking, her hands trembling, she jostled the binoculars as she scanned up the drive. Slowly. Inch by inch.

  No one.

  At least she didn’t think anyone was sneaking down the driveway, but the sun had made its final plunge below the horizon, and cloaking shadows now obscured the drive. He would have to show up at dusk. Of course he would. Easier to sneak up on her. But she’d planned for this—for every situation she could imagine, and her imagination had been vivid all these days since she’d run from him.

  A shiver ran over her, and her whole body shook.

  “Get a grip,” she whispered. “You’re prepared. Just follow your plan.”

  She dug into her bag. Pulled out night-vision binoculars she’d purchased should an occasion like this arise. She lifted them into the opening and scanned, her breath catching in her throat. Still nothing. No one. She blinked hard, clearing her eyes, and looked again. Whoever had come calling had to have taken to the woods.

  Fine. The scrub was thick and tangled. No way he could get through that brush without her hearing his movements, but not from inside the blind.

  She sat back to think. She was safer in the blind. Especially with nightfall. She’d blend in with the trees.

  Time ticked by. Minute after minute. Waiting.

  “Enough,” she whispered.

  She wouldn’t keep sitting there, waiting for him to come kill her. She’d never be a victim again like she was at the pump house. She lived through that nightmare and was stronger now. Prepared and experienced. She would take action, leave the protection of the blind, stay a few steps ahead of Oren to get to the truck she’d hidden down the road, and flee from Oregon.

  She flipped open the door, the soft sound of the polyester fabric whispering into the quiet.

  She got to her knees and shouldered her bag. After a deep breath of resolve, she made ready to leave while staying low to the ground to minimize the target she presented.

  “Hello, Tara.” A male voice came from just outside her blind, in the black of ni
ght, paralyzing her and leaving no time to grab her rifle for protection.

  Chapter 6

  Cal flipped on his Maglite and aimed it above Tara’s head. Her face bone-white, she didn’t respond to his greeting, but seemed frozen in place, drawing in air and blowing it out.

  He holstered his gun and gave her a moment to compose herself while he ran his gaze over her to be sure her race from the tower hadn’t resulted in an injury.

  Her cutoff jeans and tank top gave him a good look at her body that had turned to hard muscle the last three months. She’d been working out, likely to ensure she had the physical stamina to evade Keeler. And the bright yellow socks embroidered with black cats sticking out of her hiking boots? They weren’t at all helpful in evading a bomber, but maybe they made her smile.

  She crossed her arms and stared at him. He felt bad for sneaking up on her, but he wouldn’t apologize. She’d given him no choice. She’d bailed on him once, so when he’d arrived and she’d taken off from the tower, the element of surprise had been his only option.

  Besides, she might be frightened now, but he’d found her before Keeler caught up to her, and she would get over her fear. Death at Keeler’s hands…not so much. She was alive, and he could keep her that way. If she listened to him, which he had no confidence that she could do, considering she’d gone into hiding for months.

  It made his head hurt just to think of the challenge facing him.

  She sat up straighter. “What are you doing here, Agent Riggins?”

  And let the sparring begin. “I still need your help to bring in Keeler and want you to come back to D.C. with me.”

  She tightened her arms. “I’m sure you have other ways of finding him.”

  Interesting response. “Is that why you ran from the hospital? Because you thought we could find him without you?”

  She watched him with wary eyes, but he chose to wait for her answer. He certainly wouldn’t say something foolish and spook her into running again when he needed her help.