Dead Wrong

by Mariah Stewart

  “We’ll find him, Mara. First thing in the morning. We’ll find him,” he promised, and hoped he was right.

  After lying awake for several hours, Mara finally eased herself from Aidan’s embrace and stood up quietly. She walked to the window and looked out. The sun had yet to rise.

  She debated on whether to wake Aidan, then decided against it. His leg had clearly been bothering him the night before. She couldn’t ask him to walk the often steep paths she’d be following in her search for Spike, though she knew he’d not think twice about joining her if she asked him.

  Mara went into the bathroom for a quick shower, then dressed, not bothering to dry her hair before heading out the door. She couldn’t stand the thought of her little dog out there all night amidst all the dangers that lurked in the woods. And he just didn’t have the sense to back down from a threat. He was pretty fearless, even when he was threatened.

  She shivered as she thought about all the things that could have threatened him during the night and wondered what had led him away from the cabin in the first place.

  The first light of day was just beginning to spread over the hills when she stepped outside and scanned the scenery for movement, but she saw nothing other than a few birds. She decided to start with the ridge that rose behind the cabin and continued on for a half mile to the west. At that point, the trail led down to the waterfall and, beyond that, to a narrow valley.

  She took several steps toward the ridge, but as she walked past the mailbox, she noticed the hollow stem of a dandelion wedged between the box and the little door. She opened the box and took out the flower, expecting to find something old and dried, left long ago. But the flower was recently picked, the yellow petals still dropping pollen on the inside of the box, where it had lain.

  Confused, she twirled the stem. Annie?

  But Annie wasn’t there, her car wasn’t there. Had she been at the cabin earlier in the day, before Mara and Aidan arrived? If so, why had she left without leaving a note? Why hadn’t she waited for them?

  Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once. Twice.

  Had it been Spike? And from which direction?

  Maybe there, toward the falls . . .

  Three-quarters of the way to the falls, she came across bear scat, and her heart dropped. Praying that Spike had not had a run-in with the bear who’d left the droppings, she paused, for the first time considering the wisdom of having gone out alone, unarmed. She was never armed, she reminded herself, and she’d hiked these trails for years by herself or in the company of her sister. She’d never been in danger here before.

  She paused to listen, but heard neither bear nor dog. She resumed her search, calling Spike’s name as she walked along the trail, hoping he’d hear her voice and bark in response.

  On she walked, cautiously, until she reached the head of a ravine.

  “Oh, my God . . .” she gasped.

  Scrambling down the sloping, rocky sides of the ravine, she reached the car that was hidden there. It was unlocked, but she didn’t have to look inside to know whose car it was.

  Annie’s.

  Cold fear wound around her chest and threatened to squeeze the life from her.

  Panic set in. Her sister. Her dog . . .

  She knew without knowing who was responsible. The realization froze her where she stood as terror invaded every cell in her body.

  How could he have found her? How could he have known about the cabin? How . . . ?

  Aidan. Aidan would know what to do.

  A rustle of leaves behind her, a happy bark.

  Spike!

  She backed away from the car and turned to run in the direction of the sound.

  And slammed into the chest of the man who stood behind her, a look of vast amusement on his face. A joyful Spike leapt on the ground at his feet, barking and whining for her attention. She was too stunned to move.

  Unaware of his part in leading her into danger, Spike danced his happy dance, begging to be picked up. Keeping her eyes on the man, she lifted the dog and held him as tightly as she could.

  “Now, I couldn’t have done a better job finding you, could I?” The man smiled pleasantly. “After all this, you come to me. How perfect is that?”

  “Where’s my sister, Channing?” she asked, even as Spike licked at her face.

  “Oh, and isn’t she a direct little thing? No games for little Miss Mara, uh-uh. Right to the point.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s waiting for you to join her.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “My, aren’t you the good sister? Here you are, trapped in the woods with the likes of me, and your first concern is for your sister. I am impressed.”

  “Why did you steal my dog?”

  “Because I wanted him. I’m keeping him.”

  “Are you keeping Annie, too?”

  “Maybe. At least for now.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m going to take you to her.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  “Now, that was strictly a bit of luck on my part.” He grinned. “Actually, I’d say my luck’s been running pretty damn good lately, wouldn’t you? Maybe I should buy some lottery tickets or something. It seems I’ve got the magic touch these days.”

  He reached for her arm as if to take it, and she recoiled.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” he laughed. “You don’t have a choice in this. And let’s get something straight right off the bat, since you seem to prefer candor. I am going to kill you. And yes, of course, I’m going to kill Annie. And your boyfriend, well, he’s disposable. If my luck holds out, I can make it look like he did you both. Wouldn’t that be a kick?”

  He nodded as he contemplated the ways in which he could do this. “Yes, that’s the way to go, I think. I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just the way the cards played out.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t even know you. Why would you want to kill me?” She held the dog closer, afraid to move.

  “Like I said, it’s the way the cards played out.”

  “Those other women . . . the Marys . . .”

  “Oh, unfortunate for them, wasn’t it, that little misunderstanding? Though I must say I didn’t mind. The one woman, the older one, she wasn’t much fun, particularly, but all the same, it was an evening out.”

  “An evening out . . .” she repeated softly, horrified.

  “And today is a new day.” He reached for her arm with one hand. The other brandished a knife, the blade of which was long and wide, the edge of which gleamed. “Today is your day, Mara Douglas. Yours, and mine . . . and Annie’s . . .”

  Mara’s heart began to pound so loudly and so furiously she almost expected it to leap from her chest. Hands shaking, knees weakening, brain fogging . . .

  Get a grip! she demanded of herself. If she gave in to the fear, she’d panic, and he’d win. She had one chance, and one chance only, to survive.

  Unfortunately, that one chance was still sleeping on the sofa, back at the cabin.

  Aidan awoke with the sun in his eyes. He yawned and eased both legs out straight on the sofa. Something in his tired brain sensed that if Mara had been there, he’d have no room to stretch. He sat up and looked around the room.

  “Mara?” he called.

  He walked into the hall to the bathroom. The door was open, and the small room empty. He looked into each of the three bedrooms. All empty.

  He stepped outside onto the deck and called her, his voice hanging over the clearing like a cloud. Nothing.

  He went back inside, into the kitchen, down the steps into the basement, calling her name.

  Damn. She’d gone off without him.

  Back upstairs, he sat on the sofa while he put on his shoes and wondered how he expected to find her in these unfamiliar hills. Maybe with luck, he could find and follow her trail.

  The fancy handle of the pretty handgun he’d been admiring the night before picked up the light that sparkled throug
h the front window. He went into the bedroom and opened the drawer, took out the bullets he’d found there, and fully loaded the chamber. There’d been too much talk about bears and mountain lions. Hopefully, that would be the worst threat that lurked there in the hills.

  You never went anyplace without backup.

  Once outside, he stopped at the car, unlocked the glove box, and took out his Bureau-issued Sig Sauer, which he slid into the waistband of his jeans at the back. Aidan had no qualms about being a one-man search party, but he wasn’t going to be stupid about it. He’d carry the antique handgun, which was too big to fit anywhere but in his jeans pocket, and since he wasn’t sure just how tight the trigger was, he didn’t think carrying it in his pocket was a good idea.

  A glance at his watch told him the sun hadn’t been up for long. Mara must have left the cabin at dawn to look for Spike.

  Damn. She should have awakened him.

  He stood in the clearing in front of the house where the road ended, wondering which way to go.

  “Might as well flip a coin,” he muttered, and took the opposite path from the one they’d taken the night before.

  Aidan hobbled slowly up the sloping ridge to the top and followed the trail through the trees, every once in a while stopping to call her name.

  He stopped after twenty minutes, hoping to ease the throb in his leg. His hip was bothering him now, too, the result of climbing over the uneven terrain. It didn’t bode well for his chances of ever serving the Bureau in full capacity again. He was wondering if maybe he should think about another line of work, when he reached the topmost portion of the ridge. From the narrow valley below, he heard voices. He crept to the edge of a huge boulder and looked down.

  For a moment, he thought his heart had stopped beating.

  In the clearing fifteen feet away stood Curtis Channing, holding a knife to the throat of a pale and shaking Mara. Aidan could not make out the words Channing spoke, but the tone was taunting.

  “I’d trust you with my life. . . . ,” she’d told Aidan.

  Kneeling slowly, Aidan swore that Mara would walk away from this alive, even if it cost him his own life.

  He transferred the gun into his left hand, cursing himself for not having gotten out to the range to practice, and prayed that he could still hit his mark with his nondominant hand.

  “Let her go, Channing.”

  Curtis Channing looked up calmly, as if Aidan had been expected all along.

  “Who are you kidding?” He sneered. “You’re not going to fire that pistol. You’ll hit your girlfriend before you hit me. I think I have the advantage here, Mr. FBI. I have the girl, and I am—please take notice here—holding a knife to her throat. If you think I won’t use it, you’ll be terribly, regrettably wrong.”

  He turned Mara’s body abruptly so that the sunlight filtering through the trees bounced off the blade.

  “So this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to slide that gun right down here to me. No, don’t throw it, slide it, right down the rock there.”

  When Aidan hesitated, Channing laughed. “Please don’t think to be a hero. I will kill her. It’s not the way I’d planned—I was looking forward to many pleasurable hours in the lady’s company. After all I went through to have her, well, I guess you know that I want to make it worth my while. But if I have to kill her here, and quickly, well, I’ll do what I have to do. Your choice, Mr. FBI. Your choice.”

  Aidan stepped to the edge of the ravine and slid the old pistol down the rock, just as he’d been told.

  “That was the right choice.” Channing nodded and bent to pick up the gun, his eyes never leaving Aidan. “Now, if you’ll just stand a little straighter, I’d like to do this cleanly, with one shot—”

  In a blink, Aidan had flattened out on the rock, his Sig Sauer in his hand.

  “Oh, for crying out loud. Why did you do that?” Channing laughed again. “What’s the point? I have a gun and the girl. You don’t put the gun down, I shoot her. Then I shoot you. Either way, you lose.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?” Channing’s eyes narrowed.

  “Mine is fully loaded. Yours only has one bullet.” Aidan spoke calmly.

  Channing frowned. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Well, if you know anything about antique handguns, you’d know that many of them only take one shot at a time.” No need to tell him that the gun had been fitted with modern chambers. “Not to mention that they are highly inaccurate, except maybe for a marksman. And we know that you do your best work with a knife, right? So you just go ahead and take your best shot. But if you miss, you’re a dead man. So anyway I look at it, I win.”

  “It’ll take only one bullet to kill her. You’d take the chance that I’d shoot her?”

  “You’ll be dead before she hits the ground.”

  “Well, then. This is an interesting scenario. . . .” Channing mused.

  “Just drop the gun, let the girl go.”

  “And then what? You’ll take me in? Make the big collar? Isn’t that what you law enforcement types say?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t see that you have a whole lot of options, Channing. You can die here, or I’ll take you in and you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. But, hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll put you in with your buddy, Vince Giordano.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, come on, Channing. By the way, how did he get you to do his killing for him? What’s in it for you, anyway? What was the deal you made with Vincent Giordano?”

  Channing smirked. “Never heard of him.”

  “Now, we both know you’re lying—and not doing a particularly good job of it, I might add. Why would you be willing to go to prison—for the rest of your natural life or until they execute you—for the sake of slime like Giordano? I’d had you pegged as smarter than that.”

  Aidan stared down at Channing, saw how the killer’s eyes flickered uncertainly.

  “And you know, they’re gonna love you in prison, Channing. Now, I know you’ve never served any real time, so you don’t know what to expect. I can enlighten you, if you want.”

  “Don’t bother trying to scare me with all that talk of prison rapes and solitary confinement. I can take care of myself. And I’m not afraid of being alone. But I gotta tell you, I admire your chutzpah. I really do. You got balls, Mr. FBI. You sure do.”

  Channing raised the pistol and placed it to Mara’s temple.

  “But are you bluffing?” He met Aidan’s eyes. “Shall I call your bluff, Mr. FBI?”

  “Let her go, Curtis,” Aidan said softly.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Channing, you know it’s over. There’s no way this can end well for you. This time, do the right thing. Let her go.”

  Channing shook his head, but Aidan noticed that in spite of his bravado, the hand in which Channing held the pistol started to shake almost imperceptibly.

  “Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Claire Channing sends her love.”

  Channing visibly stiffened.

  “She’s a lovely lady. You got lucky there.”

  “When . . . when . . .”

  “Oh, let’s see. Two days ago, was it, Mara?”

  Mara nodded, her head jerking nervously.

  “And you’ll be glad to know that she spoke glowingly of you. Isn’t that something? All these years, you haven’t kept in touch, but she still spoke so lovingly of you.”

  Channing began to sweat. “Don’t . . .” he whispered.

  “Oh, and she asked, if we found you, to let you know that your father died. Mr. Channing. He passed away a few years ago. She’d been hoping that you’d hear about it and come home to be with her. She still considers you her son, you know, but of course, she doesn’t really know you, does she? Not like we do. Now, how do you suppose she’s going to feel when she finds out you’ve been murdering women for . . . how many years has it been?”

 
; Channing stood like a statue, Mara gathered close to him in his left arm, the pistol still in his right hand, the barrel to her temple.

  “Yeah, she is going to be heartbroken, don’t you think? She told us how she and her husband wanted so badly to make things right for you, after you came to live with them. How they did all that they could to help you. They sure did love you, didn’t they? They never saw that ugly thing growing inside you. Not that they’d have believed it anyway, you know? Parents are like that. From everything she told us, it sure seems like they tried to be good parents to you. Tried to give you a good home, tried to make up to you for everything that had happened. Guess they didn’t try hard enough . . .”

  “Don’t say that. It wasn’t their fault.” Channing’s voice was strained, gravely. “They did their best. . . .”

  “Well, this was just a case of the best not being good enough, right? I mean, look how you turned out. . . .”

  Aidan lowered his voice slightly. “You know, maybe this is all their fault. That could be part of your defense, Channing. If they’d tried harder, maybe none of this would have happened. Even in spite of all that your real mother did to you, if the Channings had done a better job, maybe they could have made up for all that.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t . . . say . . . that.”

  “Well, it hardly matters now, right? I mean, either way, that woman’s heart is going to be broken, don’t you think? Here, she thinks you’ve grown up just fine, and you are . . . well, what you are. Going to be real hard for her to deal with that, to know that she failed you. She tried so hard, loved you so much, and all for nothing.”

  Channing swallowed hard, the gun in his hand wavering.

  “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be you, Channing. Having to look that wonderful woman in the eye when she finds out what you are. What you’ve done . . .”

  “Don’t . . .” Channing licked his lips.

  “When she realizes what a coward you are. That you hid behind a woman, even when you knew it was over for you. And it is over, Channing. It ends here.” Aidan’s eyes never left Channing’s. “How do you think she’s going to feel? I hope the shock doesn’t kill her. That would be real tragic.”