Chasing Secrets

by Lynette Eason

  “I’m here!”

  Christina shot her a perturbed look.

  Haley ignored her. “I made it with—” she glanced at her watch—“three seconds to spare! Now where are you?” She pulled her weapon.

  Christina did the same, staying in the vehicle with the window down. “I can always run him down,” she murmured.

  “Good idea. He’s got to come out in the open first, though.” She let her gaze bounce from area to area. “The six feet under and needing a shovel crack was a message. He buried them, Christina. We need to find a pile that’s big enough to bury a bus—and do it in a hurry.”

  “This was way too easy to figure out,” Christina said.

  “Because like you said, he wanted me here but didn’t want to take a chance on us letting someone know where we were going.” She turned in a slow circle. “Hey! I’m here!”

  She started walking again, looking for the bus, keeping an eye out for someone who might have a bead on her. Christina continued to drive, keeping one side of her covered. She did her best to keep the piles of mulch and other materials to her left. There were hills and valleys. So many places to hide a bus.

  “Keep coming, Haley!”

  She froze at the sound and listened but couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. “Why are you doing this?”

  She kept her weapon ready as she covered the area, then walked forward, staying next to the Hummer, using it for protection. They rounded a corner and she saw a dark SUV parked to the side. She glanced at Christina. “You think it belongs to him?”

  “Could. But he’s not in it.”

  “No, he wouldn’t be.”

  Her brain spun, seeking a way to save the kids and get this guy at the same time. Fear pounded through her—not the fear of dying, although she didn’t want to, but the fear of failing. She kept it controlled, knowing she’d only get one chance, possibly only one shot. But he couldn’t die until she knew where the bus was.

  “Who are you?” she called out.

  Something caught her eye. Something out of place. Sort of.

  “Christina, look at that mound next to that embankment. About twenty yards in front of the SUV. Does that look different than the others?”

  “It does. Like it was shoved off the hill above it?”

  “Exactly.” She walked toward it.

  “Or he did that on purpose to lead you in the wrong direction,” Christina muttered.

  “Maybe, but we need to find out.”

  Christina stayed with her.

  Haley wanted to know who she and Christina were up against. Two against one could seem like pretty good odds, but he had a bus full of people held hostage that could be killed with the press of a button, so he had the upper hand. For now. “Come on, I’m here! Show yourself!”

  He stood up from behind the protection of the SUV, a gun leveled at her. “Toss your weapon out where I can see it. If you hesitate, they will die.”

  Haley didn’t even think about it. She knew this part had been coming. With only a slight wince, she gave her Sig Sauer a toss.

  “Very nice. Now tell your friend to throw her weapon out of the passenger side window.”

  “Do it,” Haley said.

  “You don’t have a weapon and I won’t have one if I do this.”

  “Just do what he says. He’ll kill them.”

  Christina blew out a breath, then rolled the passenger window down. She removed the clip and tossed the gun. Haley heard it land with a thump.

  “Good job. Now both of you, walk toward me.”

  Christina didn’t move. Neither did Haley.

  “Where’s the bus?” Haley asked.

  “Get in the car and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me where they are first.”

  He stood with one hand behind his back, the other held the weapon in a rock-steady grip. “You want your friends to die? I said walk this way.”

  Her stomach clenched, but she held firm. “I want to know where the kids are. As soon as I know they’re safe, I’ll go anywhere you want me to, cooperate fully.”

  Christina stayed quiet while Haley talked.

  He pulled his other hand from behind his back and Haley noted the small device tucked beneath his fingers.

  A detonator switch?

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “We’re not having a discussion. Get in the car or I blow up your friends. You have five seconds to make up your mind. One . . .”

  “Don’t do it, Haley,” Christina said.

  “I have to. Do whatever you have to do to stay alive to rescue them. He plans to kill you—and everyone on that bus.”

  “Four.”

  “I’m coming.” She stepped away from the safety of the Hummer and walked toward the vehicle he wanted her to get into.

  Christina climbed out of the Hummer. “Haley—”

  “Stay behind me. Don’t give him a clear shot. He wants me alive for some reason if he wants me to go with him.” She continued to put one foot in front of the other, desperate to find a way to avoid getting in the SUV without putting the lives of the people she loved in jeopardy.

  Christina walked slightly behind her. “If she’s going, I’m going too,” she called.

  Haley watched his eyes, and a slight shudder went through her as it always used to when she was in G2. The man’s eyes flicked to Christina, then back to Haley. His lips tightened a fraction. He’d figured out Haley had made herself a shield.

  She stopped in front of him, the hood of the SUV between them. She finally got a good look at the man who wanted her dead. He was handsome, with his dark hair and blue eyes, and he stood about six feet tall. He was built like someone who was a frequent visitor at the local gym.

  “How does she stop the bus from blowing up?” Haley asked.

  “I’ll let your friend figure that out. But she’d better move fast. Time is running out.”

  “How much time?”

  In a sudden move, he tossed the item in his hand at Christina, dove across the hood to grasp Haley’s bicep, and pressed the muzzle of his weapon against her head.

  With the gun still at her temple and his fingers wrapped around her upper arm, he slid from the hood and landed on his feet in a catlike move that even she couldn’t emulate. “Get. In. The. Car.”

  Haley knew this was no ordinary assassin. But she was no ordinary hostage.

  His grip would leave bruises, but that was the least of her worries. He shoved her toward the vehicle. Then something slammed into them. Haley grunted as they hit the ground and rolled, catching a glimpse of Christina’s face next to hers.

  A shot sounded and Haley froze for a split second. Long enough for him to get a punch into her wounded side. The pain arched through her and the breath left her lungs.

  Another crack sounded and she flinched. He was shooting at Christina. She pressed a hand to her side and prayed her stitches held.

  She rolled onto her back and saw Christina on the ground under the SUV.

  He aimed at Christina again and Haley swiped a foot into his right knee. Their attacker cried out and went down with curses. Christina rolled out from under the SUV to the other side and dove behind a smaller pile of gravel. Haley wasn’t sure a bullet wouldn’t travel right through the gravel, but at least Christina appeared to be safe for the moment.

  He turned the weapon on her. “That’s it,” he growled. “She just killed her friends.”

  “They’re not her friends!” Haley scrambled to her feet. “They’re mine and I’ve done everything you said.”

  “Except bring help with you.”

  “She was in the car already and you know it. You told me to bring her!”

  He pulled her around to the passenger side and opened the door. “Get in, you’re driving.”

  Haley held a hand to her side and drew in a deep breath, then crawled across and slid behind the wheel. The keys were in the ignition.

  He kept the gun on her while he plante
d himself in the passenger seat and shut the door.

  “Where am I going?”

  “Get back on the highway and head back toward town. I’ll give you directions as you drive.”

  “Did you kill Gerald Forsythe?”

  “I did. Now drive.”

  [27]

  Steven and Quinn drove the route the bus had planned to take. “There’s no way we’re going to find them this way,” Steven muttered. He spun the wheel and took the next turn a little too fast. He braked and wished he could slow his racing heart as easily.

  “She said I-20. Just keep looking.” Quinn held his phone to his ear. “Yeah, I left the car at the restaurant,” he said. “I had an emergency to take care of. Get someone out there ASAP to take our place. We still need to have someone trying to catch these guys. Yeah. Thanks.”

  Quinn hung up and Steven’s phone buzzed. He took the call with his Bluetooth speaker. “Yeah?”

  “This is Christina. I need a bomb squad and an explosion detection dog at Harry’s Mud and Mulch off I-20,” she panted.

  “What? Where are you?”

  “Had to find a phone. He made me toss mine. Listen up. The guy buried the kids and chaperones in a bus at Harry’s Mud and Mulch off I-20, you got that?”

  “I got it.” He exchanged a worried glance with Quinn.

  “Not sure exactly where he buried them,” Christina said, “but there’s an area that looks different. If you can get a dog over here, he can confirm it or find the right place. Probably need a Bobcat driver to remove the debris he dumped on the bus. And someone needs to call the owner.”

  “Okay, slow down. Hang on.” Haley’s students had been kidnapped? His heart thudded even while he noticed Quinn going to work with the information.

  “Christina,” Steven said, “where’s Haley?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a long story and I tried to stop him, but he forced her into his black SUV, plates GKS555. Probably stolen. But I managed to toss her cell phone through the window. I’m pretty sure it hit the back seat, but I don’t know how long you have until he finds it.”

  “You get that, Captain?” Quinn listened, then nodded at Steven.“He said they’re working on it now.”

  Steven took the exit ramp.

  “That Mud and Mulch place is about five miles back,” Quinn said. “Let’s get back there and make sure no one shows up and accidentally stumbles on the right pile and blows everyone up.”

  Steven nodded. “We need people out there looking for Haley.”

  “As soon as we get a hit on her phone.”

  Haley drove with gritted teeth. Her side pounded out a new rhythm of pain that she fought to ignore. Christina was alive. She’d escaped, so there was hope.

  He took her off the highway and through back streets she’d not gotten around to exploring since living in Columbia. “Left at the stop sign.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “I don’t get into the whys of the job, I just do it.”

  “Money.”

  “Lots of it.”

  “All right. Who hired you, then?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  She snapped her head sideways to look at him. “It might not matter to you, but he’s the one who wants me dead.”

  “Then he can tell you. You’re going to see him shortly.”

  “He wants me dead—and you were hired to kill me. But now you’ve kidnapped me, so now he needs me alive,” she muttered. “Why does he want me alive?”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her anything. She flexed her fingers on the wheel and thought about running the vehicle into the nearest solid object. After several seconds, she decided against it. She simply couldn’t afford to take the risk. She followed his directions and realized he was taking her on a road she’d already been down. They were driving in circles. But why?

  To kill time?

  He’d glanced at his phone several times but hadn’t texted or called anyone.

  He was waiting for instructions.

  She watched the clock even as she formed and discarded one plan after another.

  But the added time was good. Each minute that passed gave Christina more time to figure out how to find her and her kidnapper. Because Haley had a feeling when they arrived at their ultimate destination, she was going to be in for the fight of her life.

  Steven’s phone buzzed and he snagged it before the ring ended. “What?”

  “It’s Captain Nelson. Our tech guy got back to me about Haley’s phone and I wanted to call you myself.”

  “And?”

  “Her GPS is turned off.”

  “What? No.”

  “I’m sorry, son. We’ll keep trying in case she comes back online, but we’re going to have to figure out another way to find her.”

  Steven drove into the mulch yard, spotted Christina waving at them, and pulled up beside her. Quinn got out of the car.

  Steven didn’t move for several seconds as he listened to his captain lay out his plan, including searching traffic cams. “All right, thanks, Captain. I’ll let Quinn know.”

  “Keep me updated.”

  “Will do.” He hung up and frowned. Then he pushed his door open with a grunt and stepped into the muggy air.

  Quinn stopped midsentence with Christina. “He find Haley?”

  “Her GPS isn’t on.”

  “He hacked her phone,” Christina said. “I didn’t have time to do anything but throw it in the car before he started shooting at me. We couldn’t call for help because he knew every move she was making on it.”

  “The captain is on it,” Steven said. “He’ll figure it out. He’s also got someone searching the traffic cameras.”

  “Pull over under those trees right there.”

  “Where?”

  “There!” He jabbed her temple with the weapon. “Pull over!”

  Haley winced and glared at him, then drove the car onto the shoulder of the back road and put the gear in park.

  “Keep your hands on the wheel. If you move them, I’ll blow you away.” He pulled cuffs from the side of his black cargo pants and slapped one on her right wrist. “Slide out the passenger door after me.”

  Haley obeyed. Self-defense moves flicked through her mind, but she knew if she killed or escaped her current captor, another would just come after her. She let him drag her out of the vehicle, only to be surprised when he opened the back door, shoved her onto the back seat, and cuffed her to the door handle.

  “Try to get out before I’m ready and your friends die. I still control the bomb strapped to the bus. You understand?”

  “I got it.” She thought they had traveled way too far for him to be able to detonate the bomb, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have someone close enough to do so—or that it couldn’t be detonated by phone. She couldn’t take any chances at the moment.

  “Now lie down.”

  Haley swung her feet up on the seat and did as ordered as best she could with her hand cuffed to the door. She scanned the back seat while her captor went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He shut the door and pulled back onto the road. Haley’s pulse pounded. She wouldn’t deny she was afraid, but she was also angry. Very, very angry.

  Someone had been behind the deaths of her family twenty-five years ago and, as a result, changed the course of her life.

  “You are one tough chick, you know that?” he said.

  “Thanks.” The sarcasm slipped out before she could bite it off.

  “You have more security and are harder to get to than a celebrity,” he said.

  So he’d figured out her weak spot and exploited it. She bit her lip and prayed for the safety of the kids and chaperones. He didn’t seem to expect a response from her, so she stayed silent, hoping if she didn’t respond, he’d keep talking.

  The back of the vehicle was clean. No stray paperclip to unlock the cuffs, no ballpoint pen, no hairpin. Nothing.

  He made a sudden le
ft and she held on to keep from sliding off the seat. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything further, so she said, “Christina will find me. You know that, right?”

  “She’ll be too busy rescuing your friends from the bus.”

  “But I have other friends who’ll be looking.”

  “Let them look.”

  “Why haven’t you killed me?”

  “Because I was told not to. Yet.”

  His words chilled her and she glanced around once again. An object tucked just under the driver’s seat caught her attention. It hadn’t been visible only moments before. He turned again, another left, and the item slid further toward her.

  Her phone! But how . . . ? Christina. That’s why the woman had taken the risk and tackled her and her kidnapper. It had allowed her the time to toss the phone in the window. She’d wanted to give Haley a fighting chance if she could actually get the phone. Or a way to track her if she couldn’t. That meant help was on the way!

  But being handcuffed to the back door on the passenger side wasn’t going to allow her to grab the device. She stretched and placed her foot over it and slowly started dragging it toward her.

  He spun the wheel to the right and braked. Her foot slid off the phone and she nearly groaned in frustration. She pressed her foot back onto it and slid it further, then reached down to grab it, when her door opened and pulled her arm. She gave the phone a quick kick and knocked it back under the seat. There was no way she wanted him to find it.

  She’d have to find a way to get to it later. She didn’t think he was going to leave. Instead, she had a feeling he was planning to finish the job once he had the green light.

  He unhooked the cuff from the car and shoved her toward the building. A log cabin overlooking the lake behind it. She had no idea where she was.

  That could be a problem.

  But she took note of her surroundings and the dark sedan sitting in the gravel drive. Older pines gave the area a private feeling—a sense of seclusion.