by JT Sawyer
As the road narrowed through a thick swath of evergreen trees, he saw the two-story log cabin ahead with her name inscribed on the wrought-iron arches over the driveway. Off to the right, at the rear of the property, was a quaint guesthouse tucked into the trees.
Pulling up, he slowed his truck and scanned the area, noticing two other vehicles parked near the front porch.
He eased his truck in next to a blue Subaru which bore numerous earth-friendly bumper stickers. While grabbing his small shoulder bag, he noticed that the footprints around the parking area appeared to be weathered—definitely not made in the past few hours. Hmm, maybe it’s been windy as hell up here. That’s about the only thing that could blot out all that tread detail since it doesn’t look like they got much rain up here.
He got out and walked up the plank board steps to the porch and was about to knock when he saw the door was already ajar. He started to reach along his hip for his Glock but then heard the disarming laughter of several women inside. They sounded like old friends by their banter and Mitch withdrew his weapon hand and knocked on the door, gently pushing it open.
“Hello, Barbara—it’s Mitch.”
The women never broke their cadence and the sound of their voices appeared to be coming from the kitchen down the hallway beside the stairs. He knocked again and entered the foyer, closing the door behind him.
“Helloooo,” he said again in a louder voice. He could smell a honey-like odor in the still air. Mitch knew something didn’t feel right and now he deftly withdrew his pistol and pressed against the wall, the sweet odor permeating his nostrils as he inched towards the kitchen.
Mitch glanced up the stairwell then returned his gaze to the hall in front of him, sweeping his Glock into an open bathroom on the right then quickly entering the kitchen with his weapon clearing each corner. The laughter echoed in his head like the voices were climbing into his inner ear. What is that sweet odor? He glanced at the stove but there wasn’t anything on the burners. His mind was searching for the sound of the laughter but it seemed to be emanating from the floor and then the walls as his thoughts became hazy. Shit—this has to be some kind of stun gas or… His thought ceased as he saw a small recording device on the back counter and then several small speakers placed around the room, the laughter reverberating through every atom of air and pressing in on his temples. Mitch shook his head, his eyes watering. He tried to hold his breath and knew he had to get to an exit fast. He forced his mind to remain focused, driving away the panic from knowing that he had fallen into some kind of trap. Mitch pushed forward to the side entrance of the dining room, feeling his lungs growing fatigued. Have to get to the front door. He staggered on the red-mottled carpet and then realized the color was from fresh paint—no, wait, it was something else—blood. Mitch leaned against the couch and found himself staring right into the glassy eyes of Barbara Mulhere, whose head had a bullet exit wound in the side above the right ear.
“Christ—no,” he shouted but his voice sounded like it was coming from someone else as his speech grew slurry. His hand slipped off the couch and he crashed to the wooden floor, staring at the stuccoed ceiling as the sickly-sweet odor blanketed him and forced his eyelids shut.
Chapter 4
Dev was standing impatiently at the departure terminal in Durango after getting another announcement that her flight was delayed due to a storm in the Denver region. She sat down and ran through her list of emails on her phone, trying to catch up on some business matters. An hour later, she put her phone aside and rubbed her weary eyes. She kept rehashing the campfire story Mitch had recounted, going over the details of Kruger and wondering if there was any connection to what she’d heard from her father years ago. Dev stood up and arched her back in a stretch then looked at the Delta Airlines kiosk, which still indicated the flight was delayed.
Irritated, she grabbed her phone and dialed the direct number for Petra back at the Gideon headquarters in Tel Aviv. She knew her most trusted staff member would be at work early. After some small talk about Dev’s camping experience in the rain, she asked him to run a search on the Kruger family, with emphasis on the reputed assassin in particular. Half an hour later, Petra called back.
“So, you were right about there being a Roan Kruger who was associated with the Stasi in East Germany. After the collapse of East Germany, he went off the radar. I’ve only got one old photo of someone who is listed as possibly being Kruger but the image is very grainy and the man is wearing a hat. Standing alongside him is a blonde-haired woman who looks to be in her early twenties. No information on her either.”
“See if you can isolate their faces and enhance them then run it through our facial recognition software.”
“Will do. Hmmm…” Petra grew silent and Dev could hear him typing on the keyboard. “This just came up on my laptop in response to pulling up anything I could on Kruger. Apparently three German men entered the U.S. five days ago, in Denver. Nothing unusual about that normally but these guys are red-flagged as having ties to Stasi in younger days, though the U.S customs agents are probably unaware of that. All of them look to be in their mid-forties.”
“That is bizarre,” muttered Dev, turning to look out the airport terminal. Odd that we run into the marshal connected with the Kruger case in an out-of-the-way diner within a day of Mitch going to visit Mulhere. Now three guys possibly affiliated with the mystery assassin show up in Colorado. She bit her lower lip, wondering if she was being paranoid and if the seasoned operative in her was pushing to the forefront after being on vacation. Still, the whole thing made her stomach coil in knots. “I want you to dig up everyone involved with the case of Anton Kruger and cross-reference their information with any unusual events going on in the Denver region since those three men arrived.”
“What’s this about?”
“Not sure yet but get back to me when you have something.”
Dev put her phone back in her pocket and paced around the departure area. She walked to a food stand and bought a bottle of water, barely noticing the cold fluid as she chugged it down.
***
When Petra called her back, the Delta attendant announced that all flights to Denver had been cancelled due to the late spring storm that had intensified and was heading their way. Dev hardly noticed the woman’s voice and continued her nervous pacing next to the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the waiting area.
“I don’t have any information about the three guys who arrived in Colorado other than a security camera at a small town gas station showing them filling up a brown Land Rover. What’s interesting is that out of the list of six primary individuals connected to Anton Kruger’s case, with Mitch being one of them, two of them were reported missing by their family members in the past twenty-four hours.”
Dev gasped, her heart punching through her ribcage. She leaned against the wall, pressing the phone into her ear. “Who are they?”
“One is a prison warden named Brian Clark. He ran the penitentiary where Anton Kruger was incarcerated and later died at.”
“And the other?”
“Lisa Forgey, an ER doctor. According to these records I’m looking at, she treated Kruger after his car wreck but administered too high a dose of sedatives in his system. She was later relieved of her medical duties in a very public case.”
“No–no, Mitch was heading up to see the mother of the deputy who was killed by Kruger. I have to contact him.”
“Where are you now?”
“Still at the Durango Airport.”
“Durango—that’s where the three former Stasi guys were flagged at a gas station and where Lisa Forgey lived.”
Dev grabbed her carry-on bag and trotted out of the departure area, running towards the exit. “I’ll call you back in a minute.”
She speed-dialed Mitch’s cellphone but the automated message indicated that his line was still out of service. She stopped in her tracks and choked down a breath then redialed Petra.
“I’m heading downstairs to
get a rental car. I can’t get a hold of Mitch. I need you to see if you can pinpoint his cellphone location from your end and then get me the number for a United States marshal out of southwest Colorado by the name of Ed Roth.”
“You got it. How’s he connected?”
“I need local intel and he may be the best chance for getting to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Chapter 5
The faint aroma of crushed spruce needles pierced through Mitch’s psyche as though he had awoken beneath a Christmas tree. A second later, the shrill sound of a Steller’s jay jabbed into his throbbing head. He felt the sensation of the cold ground beneath him, a small, jagged protrusion poking into his right hip. Mitch pried his eyelids open and looked up at an array of cottony cumulus clouds just beyond the distant canopy of evergreen trees.
What the hell? Where am I? He sat up, feeling a stabbing sensation between his shoulder blades while his head reeled in a hazy fog of memory. That house—what happened? He rubbed his forehead then remembered the last few minutes before he passed out. Barbara Mulhere—she was dead, and that sugary odor in the house... He quickly did a scan of his body for signs of trauma but didn’t notice anything other than the ache in his upper back. He felt around his waistline for his Glock and his knives but they were gone. Groping through his pockets, he found they were devoid of his wallet, keys, and cellphone. Even his personal survival items like his fire starters and signal mirror were gone.
He bellycrawled over to the massive skeleton of an ancient pine tree, its warped limbs stretching skyward as if calling in vain for a morsel of nourishment from the sun. He looked at the ground, noting the damaged sections of moss and crushed branches where two other sets of boot tracks could be seen. One was a heavy Vibram sole typical of mountaineering boots while the other was narrow with a slight waffle pattern to the tread. Mitch glanced down at his own boots, which appeared to be relatively clean, and then inspected the tread pattern, which was lacking in dirt or debris. Must’ve been carried here by those two—but why? Someone’s playing a twisted game. And poor Barbara. He clenched his fist. I’ll find the animals that did that to you, I promise.
Mitch reached beside the fallen log and picked up a hefty branch, tapping the arm-length section on the ground to make sure it was solid. He studied his immediate surroundings while trying to drown out the irritating shriek of the Steller’s jay that seemed to be taunting him for his predicament from above.
Looks like this is a narrow canyon somewhere in the range of seven- or maybe eight-thousand-foot elevation based upon the spruce and aspen trees.
He craned his head up at the thousand-foot cliffs that were choked with vegetation, trying to surmise any egress routes then back down to the terrain around him. To his right was a tangle of fallen logs that bore the old marks of chainsaws at their base. A few feet beyond was a faint deer trail leading through a thicket of blackberry bushes which still held a few succulent fruits. When he turned his head to the left, his mouth hung open at the sight that met him. A bowed concrete wall over four hundred feet high jutted skyward, its sides seeming to melt into the sandstone rock of the canyon walls. The cement was unblemished and the ground at the base was cleared of debris. Near the top edge of the rim, where the wall seemed to melt into the bedrock, he saw a large set of steel girders that formed a triangle. In the center was a heavy-lift winch with a spool of steel cable. Suspended off the girders was an immense cargo hook beside a hydraulic motor.
He studied the tracks of the others again. He determined based upon the crisp edges and outline of the tread pattern that they were made within the last two hours. Did they abandon me here thinking I was a goner or are they coming back for me—to kill me or what? Hell, they could’ve done that all along or just dumped me over the cliff for that matter. What’s going on? His head was still throbbing from whatever paralysis gas was used in the house and he rubbed his temples for a minute, trying to gather his thoughts.
Before he could deduce anything further, he heard the scream of a woman coming from a cluster of boulders a hundred yards to his right. Mitch moved into a partial squat, making sure not to poke his head above the fallen log. His eyes roamed around him, searching for a makeshift weapon. He hastily grabbed a large branch then crouch-ran towards the sound. His breath was pulsing out in rivulets of steam like a locomotive as he maneuvered along the faint deer trail. With his military training returning, his eyes darted along the ground in front of him to check for foot-snares or booby-traps. The screaming grew in intensity as he rounded the bend in the trail and came upon a woman backpedaling away from the bloodied corpse of Barbara Mulhere. The older woman was propped like a broken doll against a pile of elephant-gray rocks.
The screaming brunette nearly slammed into Mitch as he entered the boulder-strewn amphitheater. The whites of her eyes seemed to occupy her entire face as she stared in shock at Mitch. She sidestepped, trying to shove past his shoulder but he grasped the fabric of her blue jacket and gently pushed her against a tree.
“Stop—I’m not gonna harm you. I heard you screaming and came running.”
She violently thrashed her arm, trying to break his grip, and raised one hand up to his cheek in a clawing motion.
Mitch parried the move and raised the hefty wooden club. “I like my face the way it is so just calm down.”
She pressed back into the tree, her chest heaving with each flustered breath while tears began forming in her eyes. “Look, I don’t know who the fuck you are but take your hands off me, now.” She balled her fingers into a fist and pulled her arm back.
Mitch slowly lowered the branch and released his grip on her jacket, noticing how clean it was. He stepped back and glanced at her from head to toe, the former FBI agent in him coming to the forefront. She was in her mid-thirties with almond-colored eyes and brown hair that hung off her shoulders along with a hint of makeup. She was wearing fancy western jeans with a single rhinestone around the corners of each pocket along with a silver-and-turquoise belt buckle which shone out from under her short jacket. Her chafed fingertips indicated someone who worked with her hands for a living—gardener, maybe, or carpenter. Her cowboy boots looked pretty well-worn and had crusted dirt entrenched between the stamped floral designs.
Mitch stepped back a few feet, keeping his club at a low-ready and scanning the canyon to either side for any movement. He felt the sting of pain between his shoulder blades again and winced, noticing the young woman doing the same. She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t seem to conjure up the memory of where he knew her from.
He pointed to the left with his club. “I woke up over there just a few minutes before I heard you screaming. Looks like two people carried me over there and laid me down, probably about within the last few hours.”
She blew a loose strand of hair off her nose, stepping forward to glance to where he indicated then staring back at him. “How can you be so sure? Maybe you drugged me and Barbara and brought us both out here to enact some bizarre serial killer fantasy of yours.”
Mitch frowned, walking over to the rigid figure of the dead woman. “She was killed at her house, probably last night or the day before based upon her wounds and rigor mortis.” He glanced around her body, noticing that there was only one set of footprints—the ones with the larger Vibram soles.
He could see the frightened woman crouching slightly to pick up a rock on the ground. “Look, I’m pretty good with swinging a stick so if you go for that rock, you’re gonna have a helluva headache.”
She leaned forward, thrusting her chin out as she spat out her words in a frenzy. “Then tell me what the hell is going on. You seem to be quite the frickin’ detective—why did I wake up out here next to Barb and where are we?”
Mitch stood up, moving towards her. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The woman winced again, trying to reach her hand back between her shoulder blades. “Barbara’s son, Tom Mulhere and I went to high school in Durango together. I was the attending physi
cian at the hospital the night he suffered a gunshot wound and later died. Barbara had asked me up to her home to go over some details on a memorial for Tom. I was walking up the porch to her house and heard a sound coming from the kitchen—people laughing.” She lowered her arm in frustration and just started wriggling her shoulders. “Shit, I must have gotten a splinter lodged in my back or something—this really hurts.”
Mitch noticed the discomfort coming from his own upper back and shoved away the sensation. “What else?”
“What do you mean, what else? That’s all I remember. I walked inside, thinking Barb was there, and then woke up against these boulders.” She rolled her tongue around her cheeks. “The taste in my mouth reminds me of some derivative of chloroform along with the increased palpitations in my heart rate, so I must have been drugged.”
He gave her a surprised look. “I’m a physician. Hardly anyone uses chloroform anymore due to cardiac issues.”
Mitch swirled his tongue around, noticing the acrid taste in his mouth and silently concurring with her. “Crude way to immobilize someone anyway. Plenty of other drugs out there that are far more effective.”