Mountain Investigation

by Jessica Andersen

  The cops and the Feds had taken everything that had belonged to Lee during their marriage, and she’d been glad to see it go. She’d given the rest of their things to charity, keeping only the few items she’d brought with her into the marriage, all keepsakes from her childhood. Nothing of any real value, and certainly nothing that would interest someone like al-Jihad. What could the terrorists possibly want?

  The more her thoughts churned, the more Mariah’s head cleared and the room sharpened around her. Her arms and legs tingled and nausea pounded low in her gut, but the rest of her felt nearly normal, suggesting that she was coming out of her drug-induced daze. Which was good news. But it was also bad news. Lee was too smart to let her regain consciousness unless he’d meant to, and she couldn’t imagine that Brisbane was any less shrewd. So they’d intentionally let the drugs wear off, which suggested things were about the change. Was al-Jihad on his way up the mountain to question her personally? The idea was beyond terrifying. Al-Jihad was said to be an expert interrogator.

  Nausea surged through Mariah, along with a rising buzz of adrenaline and the certainty that unless she got away now, she wouldn’t be waking up ever again.

  Stirring, she tried twisting on the bed. Her head spun, but her arms and legs moved when and where she told them to before hitting the ends of her bonds. Her ankles were crossed and tied with nylon rope, her hands bound behind her. A loop of rope ran from her feet to her wrists, and was threaded through an eyebolt screwed into one of the heavily varnished logs that made up the cabin wall.

  She’d been lying in the same position for so long that her shoulders and hips had all but stopped aching, and had gone numb instead. As she moved, though, the tingling numbness started to recede, and pins and needles took over, making her hiss in pain. She gritted her teeth and kept going, pulling against her bonds, searching for some hint of give. The eyebolt and beam were solid, the bonds on her ankles tight enough to cut her skin. But after a few moments, she thought she felt the ropes on her wrists yield a little.

  Excitement propelled her to work harder, and she yanked at the ropes, starting to breathe faster with the exertion. Blood moved through her veins with increasing force, and hope built alongside the panic that came at the thought that she was so close, but still might not get free in time.

  “Come on, come on!” she muttered under her breath, working the ropes while straining to hear through the closed bedroom door. Was that a voice? A conversation? Or just the radio the men had been playing each time she’d awakened? Was that a footstep? Were they coming for her? Was it already too late?

  The doorknob rattled and turned.

  Mariah froze, holding her breath. The door opened a crack.

  “Not yet,” Brisbane said sharply from the other room. “They won’t be here for another hour or so.”

  Lee’s voice spoke from the doorway. “But I was just going to—”

  “I know what you were going to do, and you’re not doing it. You had your chance to question her, and it didn’t work. Leave her be. We need her for another few hours. After al-Jihad’s done with her, you can do whatever you want.”

  Mariah barely heard Lee’s soft curse over the hammering of the pulse in her ears. But the door shut once again, and the footsteps moved away. She was saved—for the moment, anyway.

  But time was running out.

  Hurrying, nearly sobbing with terror, she fought against her bonds, yanking at the loosening ropes around her wrists and twisting against the tie connecting her hands and feet together. Slowly, ever so slowly, she worked her hands free from underneath the first layer of rope, then the second. The nylon strands cut into her skin and blood slicked her wrists, but she kept going, kept fighting, refusing to give up.

  She’d given up before, accepting her marriage for what it was. Maybe she hadn’t completely given up, but she’d certainly given in for too long, letting herself be blinded to the truth about her husband.

  Not again, she vowed inwardly. Not this time.

  On that thought, she gave a sharp jerk. Her left hand came free with a slash of pain as the nylon fibers tore into her skin. But she didn’t care about the injury. She was free!

  Working faster now, sobbing with fear, relief and excitement, she undid her other hand, then her feet. Rolling off the bed, she stood, barefoot and wobbly, wearing only the fleece sweatshirt and yoga pants Brisbane had tossed at her after her last shower. Within seconds, the crisp air inside the cabin cut through the single layer of material and chilled her skin, waking her further.

  Trying not to think of how much colder it was going to be outside in the cool Colorado springtime, especially come nightfall, she headed for the door, keeping herself from passing out through sheer force of will. Two years ago she’d been too weak to deal with the downward spiral of her life. Now, hardened by time and Lee’s betrayal, she was stronger. But was she strong enough?

  “You’re going to have to be,” she whispered, saying the words aloud because the volume gave her growing resolution form and substance.

  Brave words weren’t going to get her out of the cabin, though. Not with the bedroom window nailed shut and two armed men in the front room, not to mention the motion detectors she’d so carefully wired in the woods around her home. They’d been meant to keep her safe. Now they would warn Lee and Brisbane if she managed to sneak out the back door. She didn’t have her shotgun, didn’t have the remote control to the security system, didn’t have anything going for her except the knowledge that the men wanted her alive for another hour or two. They needed some sort of information from her, something important enough that they’d kept her alive and untouched for however many days it had been.

  They might shoot at her, but they’d be aiming to wound, not kill. And everything she’d learned about firearms since this whole mess began suggested that it was very difficult to purposefully wound a fleeing target. During the trial it had come out that Lee had serious skill in bombmaking, but he’d claimed not to have any experience with guns. If she were lucky, Brisbane wouldn’t be a sharpshooter, either. Even if he were, what was the difference, really?

  Better to die trying to escape than let the terrorists use her to kill more innocents.

  Mariah paused just shy of the doorway, feeling very small and alone. Raised by parents who’d met as rock band roadies and liked to keep moving, she’d lived in ten different places before her tenth birthday. Even after her parents had finally settled down in Bear Claw and her father had gone into engineering, landing a good job at the American Mall Group, Mariah had remained a private person, a loner who had to make a real effort when it came to meeting people. Her few forays into couplehood—including her disaster of a marriage—had only proved that she was the sort of person who was better off alone. Problem was, she wasn’t always strong enough, smart enough, or just plain enough to do the things that needed to be done.

  You have no choice, she told herself, clamping her lips together and fighting to be as silent as possible as she reached for the doorknob. Putting her ear to the panel, she listened intently but heard nothing, not even the radio. Did that mean both men were outside, maybe preparing for the arrival of the others? Or were they somewhere inside the cabin, just being quiet?

  She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to figure it out by listening at the door, either.

  Blowing out a shallow, frightened breath, she eased the panel open and paused, tense and listening. Still no sound. She slipped through, unsteady on her numb legs, her heart beating so loud in her ears she was sure Lee and Brisbane would hear it all the way out front and come running.

  But there was no shout of discovery as she slipped around the corner to the other back room, where she’d installed a rear door several months earlier. The room had served as her office; now it was overstuffed with the furniture Lee and Brisbane had pulled out of her bedroom, along with her usual office clutter. She glanced at her bureau, but it was facing the wall, which meant there was no way she could pull out clothes or shoes with
any sort of stealth.

  Crossing the room, barely breathing, she unlatched the dead bolt, wincing when the loud click cut through the silence. Then she opened the door and paused on the threshold, stalled by the sight of the fifty feet of raw-edged stumps between her and the relative safety of the forest.

  Her heart thumped in her ears. She couldn’t stay in the cabin. But crossing the clear-cut zone would trigger the alarms.

  They don’t want me dead, she reminded herself, although that was little solace as she drew a deep breath, plucked up her thin courage and plunged through the door.

  She hit the ground running. Splinters and woodchips from the clear-cutting bit into her feet, but she kept going. Seconds later, the alarms went off, emitting a mechanized buzz that sliced through the air and straight through to her soul.

  She wanted to scream but held the sound in, hoping to delay discovery as long as possible. Maybe they weren’t even home. Maybe they’d gone to meet—

  “She’s out. Get her!” Lee’s shout warned that she wasn’t that lucky.

  Moments later, a shotgun blasted behind her, and a full pellet load blew out the top of a nearby stump as she ran past it. The next shot hit the ground behind her, stinging the backs of her calves with dirt spray.

  The pain worried Mariah that she’d miscalculated, badly. Apparently, they’d rather have her dead than free.

  She screamed once in fear, but then clamped her lips on further cries. She wouldn’t give up! Sobbing, she flung herself the rest of the way across the clear-cut zone and hurdled the low electric line with ill grace.

  She landed hard, stumbled and went to her knees, her legs burning with injury and exertion. As she fell, the shotgun roared, and tree bark exploded right where her head had just been.

  Blubbering, she rolled and scrambled back up, then ran for her life as Lee and Brisbane bolted across the clearing and plunged into the forest after her. The alarms cut out abruptly. She heard the men’s curses and their heavy, crashing footsteps. They were close. Too close!

  She didn’t dare loop around to the vehicles at the front of the cabin; she couldn’t trust that the keys would be in plain sight or that her captors hadn’t created some sort of roadblock farther down the lane. So she ran the other way, deeper into the forest, limping on her badly abraded feet, but unable to slow down for her injuries. Her breath sobbed in her lungs, burning with each inhalation, and wetness streamed down her face, a mix of tears, sweat and panic.

  “There!” Brisbane shouted from her right. “Over there! For crap’s sake, get her!”

  Brush crashed, the noises closer now and gaining on her. Mariah kept going, but her body was weak; her legs had gone to jelly and her feet and calves screamed in pain. She stumbled, dragged herself up and stumbled again. This time she went down and hit the ground hard. For a second, she lay there, stunned.

  Before she could recover, rough hands grabbed her.

  Panic assailed her and she started to struggle, inhaled to scream, but someone clapped a hand across her mouth and hissed, “Quiet!”

  Then the world lurched and he was dragging her, lifting her and wrestling her into what looked like a solid wall of thorny brush from a distance, but up close proved to be scrub covering a deep depression, where a tree had fallen and the root ball had popped up, forming an earthen cave of sorts.

  Excitement speared through Mariah alongside confusion. She looked back and got an impression of a square-jawed soldier wearing a thick woolen cap, heavy, insulated camouflage clothing and no insignia. He wasn’t Lee or Brisbane. He was…rescuing her?

  He shoved her into the hiding spot and crowded in behind her.

  “Down,” he whispered tersely, pressing her into the cold, moist earth and following her, rolling partway on top of her so she was beneath him and they were pressed back-to-front, with his heavy weight all but squeezing the breath from her lungs.

  The fallen tree had rotted over time, providing nourishment for the profusion of vines and scrub plants that had sprung from it, forming an almost impenetrable thicket. But would it be enough to conceal them fully?

  Her rescuer’s arms tightened around her, and he breathed in her ear, “Be very still. They’ll see us if you move.”

  Coming from nearby, she heard the sound of footsteps in the undergrowth, and a man’s muttered curse. Freezing, Mariah pressed herself flat beneath the soldier, and held her breath, praying they wouldn’t be discovered.

  The noises stopped ten, maybe fifteen feet away. After a moment, Lee’s voice called, “Are you sure you saw her? There’s nothing here.”

  “She was there a second ago. Keep looking.” Brisbane’s answer came from the other side of the woods, back toward the cabin. After a moment, Lee moved off.

  Mariah counted her heartbeats, trying to stay calm as she exhaled slowly, then risked inhaling a breath. Another. The sounds of the search diminished slightly, suggesting that the men had moved to the other side of the cabin.

  Hoping that Lee and Brisbane were walking into one hell of an ambush, she rolled her eyes back, trying to get a look at her rescuer as she mouthed, “Where are the others hiding?”

  He must be part of a coordinated attack, right? Somehow, someone had learned that she was in trouble and had sent help.

  Most likely, the FBI agents—particularly the cold, gray-eyed bastard who’d kept questioning her father even after he’d started complaining of chest pains—had been keeping watch on the cabin. They’d probably identified Lee days ago and were just now moving in, knowing al-Jihad was on his way. The thought that they’d known she was in there and hadn’t bothered to mount a rescue beforehand brought a kick of resentment, but it was no more than she’d come to expect from the Feds. They carried out their own plans on their own timetable, and to hell with the people they hurt in the process.

  But the soldier shook his head slightly. “I’m alone,” he breathed in her ear. “Quiet now. They’re coming back.”

  What? Mariah’s thoughts churned. It didn’t make any sense that he’d be up on the ridgeline alone, but she couldn’t deny the physical reality of him, either. She would’ve demanded an explanation, but just then, Brisbane and Lee returned, stopping very close to the thick copse where Mariah and the soldier were hidden. The two men conferred in low voices.

  Breathing shallowly through her mouth, Mariah flattened herself against the moist, partially rotted leaves and twigs beneath her. She was acutely aware of the man pressed against her. The solid weight of him was more reassuring than it probably should have been, and she fought the urge to huddle her chilled body into his heavy warmth as her mind continued to race.

  What sort of soldier worked alone?

  “I’ll call down and have the boss bring up more men,” Lee said. “We’ll fan out, search every rock and tree until we find her. The bitch has to be hiding somewhere nearby—there’s no way she got away that fast with no shoes.”

  “I told you to keep her drugged,” Brisbane spat, disgusted. “Told you she was smarter than you gave her credit for.”

  Lee’s voice edged toward a whine. “I thought al-Jihad would prefer her awake.”

  “Awake doesn’t do us any good if she’s gone. This was your idea. At this point, you’d better hope to hell she doesn’t make it down the ridge, or your ass is toast.”

  “Al-Jihad wouldn’t do anything to me. He needs me.”

  “Al-Jihad doesn’t need anybody,” Brisbane countered. “Come on, let’s keep looking. I’ll start over here while you call down and tell the others we need a full-fledged search party. Have them bring up infrared, night vision, the whole works. They’ll want to watch the roads, too. The bitch is bound to turn up somewhere.”

  Despite the warm weight of the man pressed against her, Mariah began to shiver, fear and confusion warring within her. What did they want from her? Whatever they wanted, the men were right about one thing: in the absence of help, it seemed highly unlikely that she’d make it to safety—the nights were too cold, the trails difficult
to manage without proper climbing equipment, never mind without shoes of any kind. If she had help, though, she might very well make it off the ridge and into the city safely.

  Question was, did the man who held her count as help?

  As Lee and Brisbane moved off in opposite directions, the sounds of their steps fading to forest silence, she stirred beneath the stranger, twisting around to get a good look at him. “Who are—” She bit off the question with a quiet hiss when she recognized the cool gray eyes beneath the woolen cap, recognized the suit-clad monster in the man she’d thought was a soldier. “Grayson!” She spat the word out like a curse.

  It was Special Agent Michael Grayson, the FBI agent who’d made her life a living hell and nearly killed her father in his efforts to get at a truth that had existed only in his mind.

  And now she was at his mercy.

  Chapter Three

  “I prefer to be called Gray. Not that it matters much to you, I’m guessing,” he said, seeing displeasure flood her face, no doubt due to the way he’d treated her and her family during the investigation. Which was too bad, because as far as he was concerned he’d done what needed to be done.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if he was thrilled to see her, either. He hadn’t been about to let Mawadi grab her and drag her back inside, but rescuing her had complicated the hell out of the situation. He’d planned to wait for the five o’clock meet and move in then, when the motion detectors were down, but now there were going to be more men, and they would be searching the damn forest, which shot that plan to shreds.

  No, the best thing for him to do now would be to get the woman down to the city and hand her over to Johnson and his crew. The SAC would be furious that Gray had disobeyed orders, but he’d be forced to send a team up to the cabin. Gray knew damn well that by the time they got up to the ridgeline, Mawadi and the others would be long gone. But, unfortunately, as tough as Gray might be, he was just was one man with a 9 mm, and that was no match for a terrorist cell on high alert.