by Kim McMahill
“I don’t want to frighten you, but the FBI in Salt Lake has been poking around, and they’ve come up with evidence supporting our suspicions. We have reason to believe those responsible for your colleagues’ accident and disappearance are heading this way, and there can only be one reason why, and only one ultimate destination. Grace, make sure everything’s locked up and just sit tight until—”
“Until what?” Grace screamed into the receiver, which was now dead.
Blue bolted from his position curled up in front of the fire, teeth bared, hair standing on the back of his neck, a low growl resonating from deep in his chest. Aussie joined in, and the two dogs’ reactions sent terror through Grace’s mind.
Hanging up the phone, she raced to the window and froze at the sight of headlights approaching the house. She prayed it was Logan, but after Sheriff Harris’s call she knew it was only wishful thinking. Grace grabbed the shotgun, and pulling the curtain back just a fraction, she peeked outside and waited for what felt like an eternity.
With the headlights shining directly at the house, she couldn’t determine anything about the vehicle, its make, or the number and identity of its occupants.
Grace’s mind raced through the possibilities, trying to determine the smartest course of action. What could she do? No landline and no cell reception…she was on her own. She could try to text someone, but doubted she had the time or that her trembling fingers could navigate the tiny keyboard.
She had a double-barreled shotgun, but that gave her only two shots before she’d have to reload. Aussie and Blue were ready to battle, but they weren’t trained guard dogs, just loyal. She had no intention of putting them in danger. She tried to rationalize the situation and not overreact. The vehicle might belong to a neighbor, a scared and lost traveler, or as far as she could see from her location, Logan.
The engine was silenced, but the headlights remained on, shining in the window, nearly blinding her. Grace focused on the scene, and after several moments a person stumbled out of the vehicle, a parka’s hood covering all identifying features. As the lone figure slowly approached, Grace decided the most prudent action would be to keep her visitor at a distance until she determined his or her intent. She ordered the dogs to stay, and cracked the door just enough to wedge half her body and the shotgun into view.
“Stop right there. Don’t take another step, or I’ll blow you back to where you came from!” She was surprised at how steady, strong, and convincing her voice sounded as her knees threatened to buckle.
The figure stopped, arms suddenly skyward.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Grace called out.
The visitor eased one hand down low enough to pull back his hood. “Don’t shoot, Grace, it’s Jonah.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
A man grabbed a key from the pegboard mounted to the wall behind him and handed it to Stephen Clark. The man had tattoos of snakes winding from his wrists and disappearing under the sleeves of his black t-shirt. He smiled, revealing years of tobacco stains on his few remaining teeth, and then he winked.
“Four hours is a long time for a fella your age. Are you sure you need that many hours, ’cause once I take your cash, there’s no refunds if you leave early,” the man stated.
“Yes, I just need to rest is all,” Stephen replied, trying to hide his embarrassment at the connotation. He supposed he did look a little suspect. His nearly new BMW with its tinted windows disguised whether any additional occupants were aboard. The luxury automobile sat in the parking lot alongside several semi-trucks, and though wrinkled from days of continuous wear, his clothes, watch, and Italian loafers were obviously expensive.
Despite trying his best to act casual, he was twitching nervously as he stood in front of the man. Stephen behaved as if he were doing something he should be ashamed of, while he carried only a plastic shopping bag from the drugstore up the road where he had stopped for a few basic supplies.
Stephen had no idea how difficult it would be to get a motel room without a credit card. Being a bachelor, he seldom traveled, except for work, and he used a company credit card for those expenses, so had never tried to secure lodging with cash. After four tries at progressively seedier motels, he finally found one which not only accepted cash, but rented by the hour. Not ideal, but clutching the large plastic key chain tag stamped with a big number four, he felt fortunate to be off the roadways.
He had been driving and sleeping in his car for more hours than he could count, and the idea of a shower and a real bed sounded like absolute bliss.
Scanning the dusty parking lot, Stephen quickly made his way to number four. With one last glance over his shoulder, he stuck the key into the lock on the exterior door and jiggled the key until the door popped open. The daylight penetrating the dim room exposed a stained carpet, broken furniture, a television with a dial, and a double bed with a sagging mattress and faded orange bedspread.
Thinking about the No-Tell Motel’s usual clientele, an involuntary shudder shook his thin frame as he walked through the door, secured the lock and chain, and flipped on the nearest lamp.
After a hesitant glance at the questionable bedspread, he retrieved a hand towel from the bathroom and placed it on the corner of the mattress. Stephen sat down and took out the prepaid cell phone he had just purchased at the drugstore. He punched in the number for the Talbot ranch, and panic flowed through his body when it didn’t even ring. He tried Jonah’s number, and it rang until it went to voicemail. He tried Deputy Carlson’s cell, and it instantly went to voicemail.
He had never felt more scared or more alone in his entire life.
Stephen unwrapped one of the candy bars in the bag, nibbling on it as he paced to the window and looked out at the parking lot. Nothing had changed. No new vehicles had arrived, so no one must be following him, and the same trucks sat idle. He thought about how ridiculous his situation had become. He was a twice-divorced lead researcher and supervisor for a division of a moderately large company which primarily developed nutritional supplements for the lucrative pet product market.
His job and his life were as dull as possible, but here he was on the run, buying burner phones, paying cash for lodging, and fearing for his life. The absurdity struck him, and he nearly laughed, but then he thought about Kathleen, Jonah, and Grace and knew this was no joke.
He had to force himself to think like a person other than Stephen Clark. He had to become street savvy, shrewd, cunning, and hyperaware of his surroundings if he had any hope of survival.
First things first, he needed a shower and a few hours of sleep. He had long since lost any edge he might have possessed, and for the last six hours, he’d spent almost as much time looking in his rearview mirror as he did watching the road in front of him. Every vehicle he encountered on the interstate or any other highway seemed to be following him. His paranoia had nearly gotten the better of him when he finally decided to pull over and get a bed.
Now, he found himself in a room that made his skin crawl, standing behind a flimsy door he could probably kick down despite his age and lack of physical conditioning, staring out the window, looking for a person who might want to kill him.
The saddest part of his predicament was the realization that if the worst happened, no one would miss him except possibly the employee he had inadvertently thrust into danger.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Logan worked like a man possessed.
Thoughts of getting back to Grace drove him to dig frantically. His cell phone vibrated again, but there was little he could do about it while hanging by a rope off a steep slope with a shovel in hand. Putting the call out of his mind, and praying it wasn’t Grace trying to reach him, he continued to work, focusing his mind exclusively on the imminent rescue. Distraction in these situations could quickly turn the rescuer into a victim in need of rescue.
After fifteen minutes of hard labor, Logan cleared the driver’s side door of snow, but it was still stuck shut. He wasn’t sure if it
was frozen or if the metal had twisted, putting the door in a bind, but either way, he needed to get the occupants out quickly. Through gestures, Logan relayed to the driver that he would need to release the latch and push on his signal. Wedging the shovel between the narrow gap in the doorframe, and pushing on the tool’s handle while the trapped driver released the latch and shoved from the inside, they were able to force the door open after several laborious tries.
“Everyone okay in there?”
“Just terrified, cold, and angry.”
“Well, no need to be scared. I’m Deputy Carlson, and the snowplow driver who found you is topside. We have an ambulance, another deputy, and a tow truck on the way. You’ll be fine now. If you’re sure you have no injuries, I’ll harness you up and get you out of this snow bank and into a warm vehicle.”
The man and woman assured Logan they had no physical injuries, so one at a time, he roped them up, and the plow driver helped them crawl up from their precarious perch. Once everyone reached the road, Logan seated the couple in his truck, cranked the heat up as high as it would go, and piled his emergency sleeping bag on them. The plow driver offered up his hot coffee, and then returned to his vehicle to wait until he was released from the scene.
“Are you warming up?”
The man and woman nodded, gratefully cradling steaming cups of coffee.
“You mentioned being cold, terrified, and angry. I can understand the cold and fear, but why the anger?”
“We were intentionally run off the road,” the man snarled.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. We came over that rise and spotted a large vehicle approaching. The driver slowed down at first and started easing over so we could pass each other safely, and then at the last second he took off like a rocket and swerved into our lane. I had nowhere to go except over the edge.”
Logan’s gaze landed on the woman’s wide eyes, and she nodded in agreement. As his mind processed this new development, a sick feeling came over him.
“Was the vehicle a white SUV?”
“Yes, did you see it on your way here?”
Remembering the vibration of his phone in his pocket on the descent to the disabled vehicle, Logan pulled out his cell and quickly accessed the text messages. His blood went cold as he read the words from Sheriff Harris, “Get back to the ranch ASAP. They’re coming. Look out for white Suburban. We’re on our way.”
How could this happen? Was he too late? He was always a little suspicious when people claimed to be run off of slick roads, but he knew in this case the statement was true. This was no accident. These people were purposely run off the road to draw him out and leave Grace alone and unprotected.
“Get out!” he didn’t mean to yell or frighten the crash victims, but he had to reach Grace. “Grab your stuff. You’re waiting in the plow for the ambulance.”
The startled couple followed Logan to the snowplow.
“I’ve got another emergency. Wait here until these folks are safely en route back to town,” Logan ordered the driver.
“What’s going on? You look ready to rip someone’s head off.”
“I don’t have time to explain, but since there’s only one way out of the basin in the winter, if you see a white Suburban trying to get out, block it or run it off the road, but don’t confront the occupants. Keep the steel of the plow between you and them at all times. They’re presumed to be armed and very dangerous.”
“What the—?”
Logan didn’t wait to hear the rest of the plow driver’s statement as he raced to his vehicle, threw it in reverse, and spun the truck back around in the direction of the ranch, praying he would make it in time.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I hope there’s someone still alive by the time we get there,” Devyn stated as she ended her call. “It seems like every time we get close to a person who might have some insight into all the accidents occurring in the pharmaceutical arena, the individual turns up dead.”
“That’s been the trend,” Nick replied, keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel and his eyes focused on the treacherous road.
“What did your buddy, the sheriff, have to say?” Nick asked, nodding at the phone still clenched in her fist.
“Once I sent him the vehicle description it didn’t take long to locate it in town. The population is only around ten thousand, so compared to Salt Lake, there aren’t that many security cameras to check. They caught the vehicle on a feed from a gas station. Though the footage was pretty grainy it looked like two in the front and three in the backseat. The Suburban then stopped at a motel, and after about fifteen minutes it left, followed by two men in a truck pulling a snowmobile trailer. Both rigs were heading out of town in the direction of the ranch. It looks like we have six plus Hausner.”
“How many people does your sheriff have on Ms. Talbot?”
“He’s not my sheriff, and at the moment, none. The deputy assigned to protect her responded to a car accident, but Sheriff Harris and four more deputies are on the way. When he called to warn Grace the phone died. He didn’t know if the line had been cut, or the storm took it out, but he’s so worried he asked a neighbor to get a spotting scope on the Talbot ranch and give him updates,” Devyn replied.
Nick chuckled. “I love these rural, small town operations. We’re probably dealing with a professional assassin, and the local sheriff has the nosy neighbor providing recon with a spotting scope.”
“As long as he stays out of the way it’s better than nothing, which is what we have at the moment. Don’t underestimate Gage. There’s no one, besides you, of course, I’d rather have in my corner in a pinch.”
Devyn fell silent, trying not to fidget. She wanted proof she wasn’t chasing a ghost, and this was the best shot she’d gotten so far. In the last three years, an explosion at GenTech destroyed a decades’ worth of research data, killing two scientists, and the incident was blamed on a leaky gas line. Polk Genetics’ head of research committed suicide, and an analyst for Smith and Brown had a fatal skiing accident. All the investigating officers determined the incidents were accidents. She wasn’t buying it.
“You don’t think I’m imagining crimes and creating conspiracies where none exist, do you?”
“Heck no, that analyst for Smith and Brown missed the Olympics by a tenth of a second in his younger years. He didn’t ski into a tree, and when I ‘unofficially’ interviewed the Polk researcher’s young widow, there’s no way he killed himself. Not only is she smoking hot, but she said he would nearly pass out whenever he nicked himself shaving.”
Devyn rolled her eyes. She had heard more than once, and from more than just Nick, that the researcher’s wife was a knockout. She refused to buy that a spouse’s degree of attractiveness had anything to do with the likelihood of committing suicide, but she did trust Nick’s judgment completely. If he didn’t believe the researcher put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, then neither did she.
“Any word since we left Salt Lake on the whereabouts of Janice Green?” Devyn asked.
Nick gave Devyn an annoyed look over the rims of his glasses. “Except for those two brief stops for gas and to go to the bathroom, we’ve been in this vehicle together the entire time. Do you recall me talking on the phone?”
“Sorry. Being confined and helpless is driving me crazy. I don’t want to lose another lead. We’ve got to find her. At least we found a connection between UVN and the three other research companies. That link is a woman most recently known as Janice Green.”
She drummed her left hand fingers on the dashboard as she stared out at the white flakes swirling across the road. Devyn had begged Gage Harris to do everything in his power to take as many of the culprits alive as possible. He’d promised to do his best, but warned her if Deputy Carlson beat him to the scene, he couldn’t guarantee anything.
Carlson was well within his rights to use whatever means necessary against six professional criminals in order to keep himself and his charge alive, but s
he hoped the outcome would be less dramatic than the scenario which unfolded on the Mexican border during his last job, and she would get the information she needed.
“What’s your take on Carlson? Will he leave us anyone to question?” Devyn asked.
Nick reached over and grabbed her drumming hand. He squeezed her fingers, and set her hand gently on her lap. “You’re getting on my nerves. To answer your question, I wouldn’t bet on it. From what I understand about the fiasco in Arizona, it didn’t set well with him, so I doubt he’ll leave any room for a similar result. Besides, did you take a good look at Ms. Talbot? Mmm…there’s just something so pure and innocent in those baby blue eyes and big blond curls, I’d happily take a bullet for her. Think about how grateful she would be, and how could I refuse her gratitude?”
Devyn slugged him, but he hardly flinched, having worked with her long enough to anticipate her response. She wanted to be mad, but despite her partner’s preoccupation with pretty women, Devyn had no doubt he’d take a bullet for nearly anyone, pretty or not.
“You’re a pig,” she chuckled, though knowing he mostly said outrageous things just to get under her skin. Her observations since they began working together exposed him as a considerate, polite, and respectful man, especially where women were concerned. He clearly loved them, all of them.
“Lucky for me, apparently Ms. Talbot has a soft spot for swine.”
Devyn rolled her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat, praying they’d reach the scene, which she feared would be a bloodbath, in time to get answers.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Grace stared at Jonah in disbelief. The last person she expected to pull up in front of the house at her uncle’s remote ranch after dark in a snow storm was her city-loving, nature-hating, snow-fearing colleague.
“Grace, can I come in? I’m freezing.”
“Just a moment.”