Deception Lake

by Paula Graves

  About a quarter mile away, there was nothing but sandy shoreline for a half mile, with only a sparse assortment of trees to offer any cover from further rifle fire. If they kept going, they’d be easy targets.

  She felt Jack’s pace falter as he spotted the open area spreading out ahead of them. He shot a quick, worried look at her.

  She gave his hand a hard tug and started running toward the tree-lined slope. “Up!”

  With a groan, he made the turn uphill.

  The trail up the mountain was full of twists and turns, well sheltered by hickory, maple and pine trees that grew thick in the lower elevations. The slope was a steady ascent but not so steep that they had to resort to a true climb. And she hadn’t heard any more gunfire since they started the run uphill. Maybe the shooter’s vantage point was blocked in some way by the mountain terrain.

  Which meant they just might have a chance to throw the gunman off their trail. But they’d have to make their move now while the gunman was changing positions.

  Peering up the mountain, she scanned the tree line, trying to see through the thicket of evergreens that hid the face of the mountain from easy view. What they needed was somewhere to disappear from sight for a few minutes. A sheltered spot or—

  There. Where a rocky knob jutted out from the mountainside, she spotted a dark place that might be the mouth of a cave.

  “Come on,” she urged Jack, pushing him in the direction of the outcropping.

  “They’ve stopped shooting,” Jack said, grimacing as his foot hit a patch of loose rocks and forced him to twist his body to keep from falling. She found herself wincing in sympathy as his face creased with pain.

  She touched his arm, sliding her fingers down to brush his hand. “They’ll start again. But I think we’re out of their visual range for now, so we need to get to that outcropping up there as fast as we can.”

  He followed her gaze, his eyes narrowing against the late-morning sun. “Is that—?”

  “A cave? I think so.”

  The rifle fire didn’t resume during the endless minutes it took to close the distance to the rocky knob. In the shadow of the overhanging stone, the opening of the cave became more readily visible. It wouldn’t fool the gunman up close, but maybe in the scope, the cave mouth would look like a simple indentation in the rock.

  She hoped so. Because once they went into that cave, they would be trapped with no way out.

  Jack’s gaze locked with hers. “If we go in there—”

  “I know. But I don’t think we have a better option.”

  His lips pressed into a tight line, but he nodded at her backpack. “Did you grab the flashlight from the truck?”

  “I had one packed already.” She pulled the flashlight from the outside pocket of her backpack and walked toward the cave mouth.

  Jack pressed close to her, his heat a comforting presence at her back. They entered together, moving slowly while she swept the narrow beam of light across the cave’s rocky interior. It was small and damp, but there were several large chunks of rock that would provide somewhere to sit other than the rough, uneven cave floor.

  Hobbling toward the largest rock with an approximately flat surface, Jack settled down with a groan. “If we get out of this mess and I ever get back home to Wyoming, I promise I’m going to give physical therapy another go. Scout’s honor.”

  She nudged him sideways and sat on the rock beside him, dropping her backpack to the cave floor. “You were never a Scout.”

  “True.” He looked down at her backpack. “Please tell me somewhere in that magical bag of preparedness, you packed a bottle of water.”

  She unzipped the bag and produced one. “I packed four. But we need to make them last, so don’t drink all of it at once.”

  He swallowed several gulps and handed the bottle back. “Did you know about this cave beforehand?”

  “No. I just know the terrain pretty well by now. Lots of caves in this part of the mountains, so I figured our odds were good.” She took a couple of swigs. “But if anyone finds this place, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “Great.” He grimaced.

  “Your injury’s really hurting you, huh?”

  He turned and pressed his forehead against her temple. “I’ll be okay. In a day or two.”

  She nestled closer as he draped one arm around her shoulder, enjoying the heat of his body in the cool, damp cave. “I don’t think we can get any sort of phone reception in this cave, but I can give it a try. Though I’m not quite sure who to call.”

  “I could call Riley. He’d come, no questions asked.” Jack’s beard stubble scraped lightly against her skin, shooting sparks through her nervous system. “You think there’s really a chance your phone can get a signal with all these rock walls around us?”

  “Like I said, I can try.” She dipped her hand into the backpack at her feet and pulled out the phone.

  No bars.

  “No reception.” Slumping against Jack’s side, she pocketed the phone.

  “I could sneak outside—”

  She shook her head. “Can’t risk it. If the shooter’s had time to switch to a better line of sight, he’d spot your movement.”

  “Do you think it’s Carlos?”

  God, she hoped not. “I don’t know. Carlos obviously knows his way around guns, but he liked handguns better than long guns.” She’d seen his handiwork up close and personal in Colombia, shortly before the federal police had descended and swept her up in a raid. She’d been so relieved to get away from Carlos, it had taken several hours to realize she’d merely traded one nightmare for another. “But I’m sure he’s not the only one that crooked senate candidate has on the payroll.”

  “You said Endrex was connected to some criminal organization.”

  “Quinn said he went undercover with Cortland Enterprises, but I’m not sure Quinn trusted Endrex’s motives.” She shook her head. “But why hand over the flash drive and tell me to give it to Quinn? If he’s telling the truth about what’s on it, that’s the kind of thing a struggling crime ring would love to get their hands on. Imagine if they could get enough dirt on a US senator to put him in their pockets?”

  “Maybe Endrex lied about what’s on the flash drive,” Jack suggested.

  She pulled the flash drive from her pocket and unzipped her backpack. “Just one way to find out.”

  * * *

  “STILL NOTHING FROM the in-laws?” Nick Darcy’s voice was a bit tinny over the cell-phone speaker, but his British inflections would have given away his identity even if the phone number on the cell-phone display hadn’t.

  “Not so far. They’re out on the lake, like it’s just another day of fishing.” Quinn lifted his binoculars and took another look, just to reassure himself that Hannah Patterson and her husband hadn’t pulled a fast one. She was a Cooper by birth, after all, and the past few years had taught Quinn never to underestimate any member of that trouble-magnet family.

  “They know they’re being watched.”

  “Of course.”

  “And the Jennings woman has decamped entirely?”

  “If you’re asking have I heard from her, no.” Nor had he expected to. As disturbing as the attacks on Mallory Jennings were to him, they would be exponentially worse for the woman herself. She knew he’d been worried about a mole in the agency, and it was becoming painfully clear he was right.

  And now he had a pair of suspects.

  Nick Darcy and Anson Daughtry were the only people at The Gates who had any idea Mallory Jennings was something more than part of the agency’s clerical staff. Which meant it was highly likely that whoever had leaked Mallory’s whereabouts was one of those two men.

  Men he’d trusted as much as he trusted anyone.

  “You don’t have any idea where she’d go?” Darcy sounded as if he suspected Quinn was being less than forthcoming. The man was no fool.

  “The Pattersons are moving positions on the lake. I have to go,” he lied, ending the call. He lifted the bino
culars again, this time focusing on the back of Patterson’s neck.

  What he saw there made him sit up straight.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled, spotting the black tribal tattoo peeking out from the collar of the man’s gray T-shirt.

  Riley Patterson didn’t have a tattoo.

  He picked up his phone and dialed a number. Through the binoculars, he saw Hannah Patterson reach into the pocket of her jeans and pull out her cell phone.

  “Spotted the tat, right?” she asked without preamble. “I told Caleb he should put some makeup on it, but he said it felt too girly.”

  He flipped through his mental dossier on the troublesome Cooper family and came up with one of the Birmingham cousins. One of the older brothers was named Caleb, wasn’t he? “Caleb Cooper, I presume?”

  “I’m flattered you know my whole extended family tree, Quinn.”

  “Where’s your husband, Hannah?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You’re not a very good liar.”

  “But I’m a very good wife.” She hung up the phone.

  Quinn ended the call with a hard jab of his finger on the phone’s display screen. Pain darted through his knuckle, reminding him that violence was almost never a good response to frustration.

  Almost.

  Mallory Jennings was running. It was what she did best, and he’d come to know her well enough over the past few years to be able to make a few educated guesses about where she’d end up next.

  But this time, there was a wild card named Jack Drummond. And what Quinn knew about the Wyoming cowboy wouldn’t fill up one page in a CIA dossier, much less give him a clue where he and Quinn’s missing hacker had gone when things went belly-up.

  He hit the speed dial for Anson Daughtry’s number and waited for an answer. After the third ring, the IT technician answered in a distracted baritone, “Something up, boss?”

  “Any luck tracking Jennings?”

  “None.” Daughtry sounded personally aggrieved. He prided himself on his technical skills and hadn’t been happy when Quinn brought in an outside hacker to conduct the hunt for the hacker she knew as Endrex.

  His real name was Nolan Cavanaugh, and he’d been instrumental in bringing down a dangerously corrupt cabal in the previous US president’s administration. He’d also risked his life to expose the Wayne Cortland crime organization a couple of years earlier.

  Quinn wanted to believe the man was still what Mallory Jennings termed a “white hat,” but he’d seen and done too many questionable things in his own life to truly trust the actions and motives of another person.

  Including Mallory Jennings herself.

  “Do you think she’s gone rogue?” Daughtry asked, his low voice rumbling like thunder through the cell phone speaker.

  “Stop tracking her for now. I’m following other leads,” Quinn said instead of answering Daughtry’s question. He hung up and started the car, shifting mental gears as he pulled away from the lake and started back toward Purgatory.

  It was a fluke, really, that made him glance back toward the lake as he was making the turn onto the highway. A flock of mallards that had been foraging in the fallen pine straw carpeting the lakeshore took to flight in a flutter of wings, drawing Quinn’s attention. A second later, he saw the reason for their sudden ascent—a lanky man running at a full gallop through the trees near the shoreline, his sandy ponytail flying out behind him.

  Son of a bitch.

  Quinn jammed on the brakes and jerked the car into a spin, reversing course to intercept the running man.

  He’d finally found Endrex.

  * * *

  THE SECURITY SCAN finished without detecting any malicious software on the flash drive. Mallory glanced at Jack before she clicked the icon for the removable drive. “Here we go.”

  He didn’t miss the fear in her eyes. He put his hand on her back, flattening his palm between her shoulder blades. She leaned into his touch, and he scooted closer to look over her shoulder at the computer screen.

  The flash drive contained only seven files, according to the disk listing. All large image files. “Start at the beginning,” he suggested softly when she hesitated with her finger over the touch pad.

  She clicked the first image. An image program opened and the first photograph popped onto the screen, revealing a surprisingly clear image of two men sitting on a bench under a tree. In the background stood the corner of what looked like an old stone building.

  Mallory sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Is it Carlos Herrera?” he asked, rubbing his hand lightly over her back.

  She nodded. “And the guy with him definitely looks like Albert Morris. At least, he looks like the guy in his campaign commercials.”

  “Do you recognize the location?”

  “A park maybe? Somebody at The Gates would know.” She sighed. “If I trusted them enough to take it there.”

  “If we could get in touch with Riley...” Jack paused, realizing what he was about to say would mean nothing to Mallory. She didn’t even trust him, not really. She certainly wouldn’t trust anyone he’d never met himself, like Hannah’s family.

  But Riley spoke of the Coopers with the same respect, trust and affection he spoke of his old friend Joe Garrison, whom Riley had known since they were ranchers’ sons in Wyoming.

  “If we could get in touch with Riley, what?” Mallory asked, clicking through to the next photo, which showed the same two men standing on a metal-truss footbridge over a small creek.

  “Nothing.”

  She looked up at him. “You were going to say something.”

  “It was stupid. You don’t even trust me, so there’s no way you’re going to trust my brother-in-law’s in-laws.”

  Her lips quirked. “Probably not.”

  “It’s just—Hannah’s family has a lot of experience dealing with the kind of trouble we’re in now. And if you don’t trust Quinn—”

  “You think I’d turn to a bunch of complete strangers for help? Right.” She arched one dark eyebrow at him before she turned back to the computer screen. “Let’s get through the rest of these photos, see if we can figure out where this meeting took place. My laptop battery won’t last forever.”

  The fourth photo elicited another soft intake of breath from her. “I know where these images were taken,” she said, pointing to a tall-gabled clapboard building in the background. “That’s the stables and carriage house at Belle Meade.”

  “Belle Meade?”

  “An old plantation in the state capital. People tour it all the time. Carlos and this Albert Morris guy could have arranged to connect on one of the tours. Pretend to hit it off and nobody would have thought anything about it unless they knew who—or more precisely, what—Carlos is.” She flipped back through the photos they’d already seen. “I think that footbridge is there, too, and I’m pretty sure that stone building in the first picture is part of the estate.”

  “Does that help us get out of here without being shot?” he asked.

  She shot him a withering look. “No.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss my idea to contact Riley.” He softened his words with another light stroke of his hand down her back. “If we can get away from these rock walls, I might be able to get a signal on my phone.”

  She twisted to look at him, her expression dark with worry. “Jack, if you go out there, whoever’s got that rifle will see you. Then he’ll shoot you. And I don’t know what—” She stopped short, her lips clamping shut in consternation.

  He cradled her face between his palms, struck hard by what he saw shining in her eyes. He kept his voice deliberately light, though his heart was suddenly pounding against his rib cage. “You don’t know what you’d do with the corpse?”

  She punched his arm, but her lips curled at the corners, just a bit. “I don’t know how I’d have gotten through these past couple of days without you,” she admitted in a half whisper.

  “Alone,” he answered,
just as quietly. “You’d have just done it alone.”

  To his surprise, tears filled her eyes and trembled on her lower lashes.

  “We’re both too alone in this world, I think,” he added, dipping his head until his mouth brushed against hers.

  She threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer, parting her lips as he kissed her again, her tongue sliding across his lower lip.

  He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, not hurrying the moment. He couldn’t be sure how much longer they could hole up here, how much longer either of them would live if the gunman who’d just chased them up the mountain ever figured out where they were hiding, and he’d be damned if he rushed through any of the time he might have left.

  With a soft growl of frustration, Mallory pushed away from him to look at him. “You think your brother-in-law can really help us?”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  “Then let’s see if we can find another way out of this cave.” She stood and picked up the flashlight he’d laid on a nearby stone. She turned it on and swept the beam across the far wall of the small cave, looking for God only knew what. Suddenly she hurried forward, directing the flashlight beam upward.

  Jack stood, grimacing at the hard ache that spread through his hips and down his legs. He’d overdone the running and climbing, he thought, especially since he hadn’t been back to physical therapy in weeks. But he pushed forward until he reached Mallory’s side, following the flashlight beam where it bounced off the roof of the cave.

  “There’s an opening up there,” Mallory said. “It looks small, but I think I might be able to squeeze through. Even if I can’t, it might give me enough of an opening to pick up a cell signal.”

  The opening was about ten feet overhead, he estimated. Not an insurmountable distance, but getting up there using only the contours of the cave wall wouldn’t be easy. If she were to fall, she risked serious injury. “There’s got to be another way—”