by Rachel Grant
He nodded toward the shoot house. “You saw how it went. Even without ammo, a run through the house gets the adrenaline going. Add a screaming hostage into the mix, and it starts to feel too real, too fast. There are some things you don’t want to experience. Even in simulation. We aim to make it feel real so it’s damn scary for everyone involved.”
Her throat went dry. She hadn’t thought her objection through.
She’d long suspected her brother’s murderer could be on Falcon—after all, Vin had been on Falcon—and the idea of one of them putting even an unloaded gun to her head gave her the creeps. She pursed her lips and gave Alec a sharp nod.
“I need you to go to the observation post while we finish this exercise. We still have a lot to do, and I need to focus.”
She followed his instructions without a word. She wasn’t mad—at anyone but herself. She hated being wrong and needed to collect her thoughts. The observation post was a good fallback position.
She watched from above as Alec and Nicole directed the teams to run through the house again and again. Alec’s focus was razor-sharp, as intent as he’d been before their argument. She’d promised not to get in the way, and was glad to see she hadn’t gotten into his mental space, not when he had an important job to do.
But he was in her mental space, and that was the problem.
She was becoming convinced she’d been wrong about Alec all these months. And now that she was seeing firsthand what Raptor offered soldiers in terms of combat readiness, guilt over the two months of missed trainings swamped her. Hundreds of soldiers wouldn’t have the benefit of getting the crap scared out of them in Alaska, so they’d be better prepared to shake off the freezing response to fear in Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Syria, or Iraq, or wherever they were sent next.
Hadn’t Vin talked about how valuable the training was, when he’d gone through it?
Wasn’t that part of why he took the job? He’d been excited to have options outside the military, but he’d also been pleased with the results Raptor achieved. Her big brother had been a born teacher, and here he’d finally had his chance to teach.
She tried to shrug off the guilt. Without shutting down the compound, how else would she have gotten Alec’s attention? No one believed Vin had been murdered at all. No one would listen. So she went after the compound on the grounds that it wasn’t safe. She didn’t get results until the shutdown. There hadn’t been another way.
Except…she didn’t get results when the compound was shut down either. The government investigators who evaluated the safety procedures didn’t give her the time of day. None of the inspectors suddenly came forward and said they believed Vin had been murdered.
Alec certainly hadn’t come around. He didn’t hear her out, didn’t start to believe, until something happened to him. Only then did he agree to listen. His abduction had finally gotten her what she so desperately wanted.
She hoped to hell that he believed her innocence now, because an outsider looking in could think she had a very strong motive for abducting him.
Chapter Fourteen
It was well after lunch when the planning meeting wrapped up and Falcon team and Nicole returned to the main compound buildings. Alone again for the first time since their discussion earlier, Isabel was strangely nervous. Not that she feared he was angry with her, and she certainly wasn’t angry with him.
It was more the suspicion. What if he remained suspicious of her? What if this slow seduction—if that was what this thing was between them—was all a ploy to determine if she was behind his abduction?
He could bring her anywhere on the compound and tell her it was where Vin disappeared, and she’d have no way of knowing if he was lying to her.
“We can take ATVs as far as the river. But it’s too deep to cross in this area and the bridge too narrow,” he said. His deep voice was a low rumble. Strangely, achingly familiar after such a short acquaintance.
Just his voice delivered a pleasurable chill.
What was wrong with her? She wasn’t the type to get twitterpated over a handsome face with a perfect body. At least, not since she was eighteen. Not after the time the guy she had a crush on had sex with her best friend during their big graduation party, then had the gall to try to get into her pants thirty minutes later.
That was the night Isabel had sworn off handsome jocks. And confiding in girlfriends.
Alec Ravissant was far more than a handsome jock, though. To lump him in the same category with the boy soccer player from her senior year was seriously selling the man short. Alec was the full package—brains, brawn, and charm.
“Do we need ATVs?” she asked. “You miss so much, riding. Plus they’re so loud.”
“We can walk, but we won’t have a lot of time to dally. Keith’s plane should be landing about now. We’ve got three hours, tops. It’s a lot of hiking for three hours.”
She gave him a wry smile. “Hiking in the woods is sort of one of my specialties.”
He waggled his eyebrows, and his sexy voice lowered even more. “Want to know what one of my specialties is?”
She rolled her eyes. “Avoiding walking by getting women to drag you through the woods?”
“No fair. That was a seriously off day for me.”
“Uh-huh,” she said with as much skepticism as she could put in the syllables.
He lunged and scooped her up, his arms wrapped around her butt as he held her so they were chest-to-chest, face-to-face. “You want me to make up for it by carrying you today?”
It would be so easy to lean in and kiss him.
She braced her forearms against his chest; her wrists rested on his collarbones. Her fingers itched to slide up into his dark hair as she held his gaze, her mind utterly blank, snappy comebacks lost to the heat in his eyes. Finally, she licked her lips and managed to say, “I don’t think so. I think I like having you in my debt.”
“I believe in paying back with interest.”
She slid against him as he slowly lowered her to the ground. “I’m counting on that.”
She plucked her backpack from the ground and slung it over her shoulders. “Which way are we headed?”
“Northeast.”
“Let’s get going then, Tiger. We’re burning daylight.”
“Tiger?”
She had no intention of telling him where that nickname came from.
First he led her to the place where Vin had been found the day he fell and dreamed of the lynx cave. She pulled out her quadrangle map and studied the terrain, looking for landforms that could conceal caves. “Did Vin ever come back here?”
“Not that I know of. But he and the trainees camped about a half mile from here for that last survival training. They hiked through this area.”
“How do you know this is where he was found?” she asked.
“The two operatives who found him that day identified the location when we investigated your theory after he died.”
“Who found him?” She’d asked Nicole this question, but she’d never answered. But then, Nicole hadn’t answered any questions about Vin—probably because Raptor attorneys had warned her not to.
“Ted Godfrey and another operative who left for Apex about a month before Vin died.”
She stared up at the steep hillside Vin had fallen from just over a year ago. A game trail was faintly visible crossing the active talus slope. “Do you think there’s a connection between what happened to Vin and Apex?”
“I don’t know. The fact that your cabin was hit by Airwave last night seems damning, but also convenient, if someone wanted it to look like Apex was involved.”
“I don’t like it,” she murmured, taking a step toward the slope.
“The Apex connection?”
She shook her head as she stepped onto the slope. She took three steps sideways, each slightly higher than the previous. As expected, the rocks rolled, and she slid down, gaining only a few inches of elevation from her starting point.
She met Alec’s ga
ze. “I don’t like this slope. Why would Vin climb it? He was alone—and had already been lectured about hiking alone by Dr. Larson—and the slope is too active. A fall would have been a foregone conclusion. It’s a terrible hike with no benefit. The summit is below the tree line and from looking at the map, it appears to back up to an even bigger hill. There’s no view. No way in hell did Vin climb this slope.”
Alec slapped at the cloud of mosquitos that had swarmed around them as soon as they paused at the base of the steep hill. “According to his write-up of the incident, there was a rockfall trail through the talus, indicating Vin had fallen—and then rolled—about thirty feet.”
She faced the slope again and kicked at the rocks, triggering a small slide. The truth settled in her gut. “Godfrey lied.” She glanced over her shoulder at Alec. “Why wasn’t he at my cabin last night? Or, for that matter, at the shoot house this morning? The rest of Falcon was both places. It crossed my mind last night that he could have been the one who shot the bear bangers and set off Airwave.”
Alec frowned. “He quit on Thursday. He was recruited by Apex.”
“So it could have been him.”
He nodded. “When we get back to the compound, I’ll ask the FBI to check on his whereabouts.”
She reached down and scooped up a rock, then chucked it at a high point in the slope. The impact caused yet another mini-avalanche of stones. “Vin must have seen this during the training. He’d have remembered hiking this area, but because he was unconscious when he was found and didn’t come to until he was inside the compound, he didn’t know what hill he supposedly fell down. One look at this slope and he’d have known Godfrey lied, or that if he really was found here, that someone had to have dumped him at the base and made it look like a fall. It must have been jarring to realize he didn’t remember what really happened that day.” It had been odd enough for her last night, and she’d only lost thirty minutes.
“Tell me about it,” Alec said with a hint of bitter humor. Then he sighed. “My guess is, your brother believed the dream was just that, until he returned here and things stopped adding up, or maybe being here triggered a memory. Like I was able to remember the pain of infrasound after reading Vin’s description.”
“And I was able to remember the earthquake in my living room after you told me you heard an explosion. It’s like the memories are there, but only accessible with a trigger.” Even now her recall was vague, more like snapshots in a photo album, viewed from outside, disconnected from her thoughts and experience. She glanced around and attempted to wave off a dozen mosquitos that vied for her blood. “So Vin saw this place and remembered something. Maybe.”
Alec nodded. “Maybe.”
“The group was camped here,” Alec said, pointing to the spongy ground beneath a stand of tamarack trees. “According to the trainees, Vin slept over there—set off from the group. There were four of them—three trainees and Vin—and they each had a two-hour watch shift. One of the soldiers—a nineteen-year-old boy who’d yet to complete a combat tour—probably dozed on his shift. When another soldier woke to take over, they noticed Vin was gone.”
Alec circled the small area. “They assumed he’d stepped away to take a leak, and made a bird call signal, one Vin should have repeated. He didn’t.” He paused and scanned the hills that jutted from the landscape a hundred yards away. Beyond the foothills were glacier-covered mountains, nothing but wilderness for hundreds of miles. “It dawned on one of them that Vin’s gear was gone too. But instead of worrying and raising the alarm, they assumed it was some sort of test. They figured Vin had moved a distance away and was watching them to see how they’d do in survival training without an instructor.” Alec rubbed a hand over his face. That first night, Vin had still been alive. If the trainees had followed protocol and radioed back to the compound, a search party would have been formed. They might have found him. But it wasn’t until twelve hours after Vin had disappeared that anyone in Raptor was informed one of their own was missing.
He finally turned to meet Isabel’s gaze, not knowing what he expected to see. This was different from visiting the place where Vin had supposedly fallen—which had been a puzzle with possible answers. She’d been quiet from the moment they reached this area, and now tears fell unchecked down her cheeks, and he felt like a complete and utter ass for not having made arrangements for her to visit this place months ago.
His lawyers had said many times it was unwise, and he damned himself for listening to them. One problem with growing up in an überwealthy family was the perpetual lawsuits. He’d had his own team of lawyers since he was sixteen and a fender bender—in which he’d been the middle car, rear-ended by a distracted driver and shoved into the stopped car in front of him—triggered his first frivolous lawsuit.
His father had freaked when Alec told him he intended to spend his inheritance on Raptor. Companies like Raptor were a tort lawyer’s wet dream.
But Alec had moved forward, knowing he could turn Raptor into something special. The mercenary organization—and the Alaska training ground in particular—would teach soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines life-saving skills. All branches of the military would receive specialized training that was desperately needed to defeat terrorists and insurgents and suicide bombers and all the new threats that had developed during the ongoing war on terror.
He didn’t give a crap if he was sued. He didn’t give a damn about his family’s money. He only cared that the company and assets didn’t fall into the wrong hands—as they’d been under Robert Beck’s ownership.
But still, he had attorneys. Legions of them. And, to a man, they’d insisted Isabel Dawson not be taken to the place where Vin disappeared or where he died. They were certain she would try to take Alec and Raptor for everything. Not that she’d succeed, but that allowing her inside invited the threat. He was fairly certain several lawyers, eager to present her case, had approached her. As far as he knew, she’d turned down every one.
Isabel had even refused the insurance money for Vin’s accidental death, because she didn’t want any legal documents to show she’d even tacitly accepted Vin’s death as an accident. The money sat in an escrow account, unclaimed.
Now, after meeting her, he was certain he’d never had to fear a lawsuit from her. Money played no part in her motivation.
She stared at the last place Vin was seen alive, with silent tears flowing down her cheeks. Alec crossed the soft, mossy ground and took her into his arms. She stiffened at first, but then settled against his chest. Her arms wrapped around his waist, and she let out her first audible sob.
He stroked her hair, which was every bit as soft as he’d suspected, but this was not what he’d imagined for the first time he tangled his fingers in her beautiful curls. “I’m sorry, Iz. I should have brought you here months ago.”
She nodded. “I know why you didn’t.”
“Because I’m an ass.”
She laughed even as she cried. “Well, sure, but I also know you were warned I’d sue you for everything if I could.”
“I’m sorry I listened.”
She looked up at him, her green eyes glistening and beautiful and sad. “Thank you.” She rose on her toes and pressed her lips to his. A soft kiss of friendship and acceptance that gave him hope she could forgive him.
If she forgave him, maybe they had a shot at more than friendship, more than sex, which he realized in that moment was what he wanted. Last night he figured he could be satisfied with a no-strings physical relationship, but they’d passed that point. He wasn’t sure when. Maybe when they flirted over breakfast, or when he’d had a visceral, negative reaction to the suggestion she play the role of hostage. Maybe when didn’t matter.
He ran his thumb over her chin. “You ready to go to the place where we found him?”
She nodded. “I’d sort of hoped to look around—to see if we could find a cave—but I don’t suppose we have time.”
“Not today. I promise, we searched this area, and th
e area around the talus slope where Godfrey said they found him, thoroughly. There aren’t any caves until you get into the higher foothills—and we didn’t find any petroglyphs in those.”
“I’ll still want to look.”
He nodded. “Maybe Tuesday. I need to finish prep for the upcoming training first.”
“I could go by myself—”
“No. It’s not safe.”
She frowned. “I hike by myself all the time, Alec. It’s part of my job.”
“I’m not worried about bears. I’m worried about whoever killed Vin.”
He caught the widening of her eyes. Had he not said it outright before? He wasn’t sure, but even if he had, it was clear she wasn’t used to hearing it. “He was murdered, Iz. And we’re going to find out who did it.”
She gave him a sharp nod and said, “Let’s go.”
They walked for nearly an hour before they reached a narrow footbridge that crossed the river. “We think Vin crossed a mile downstream the day after he disappeared. I’ll take you to where we think he crossed after I show you where we found him.”
“Were you part of the search team?”
“Yes. The day he was reported missing, I caught a flight from Maryland and joined the search. Brad Fraser and I found Vin.”
She took his hand in hers and squeezed. “Brad never told me that.”
“He wasn’t under orders not to—he probably felt it would be hard for you—or that you’d pressure him to take you there.”
“Probably the latter. And, honestly, I would have.”