by Fiona Quinn
Two dead. Two alive.
No help in sight.
Anna read the texts from Mulvaney’s everyday phone where she was communicating with the FBI. Mulvaney had sent them her concerns about the weather, and they had said stay the course, but had given her a West Virginia address where they could hunker down until things blew over. Anna pulled the map from the glove compartment and found the route.
Interesting.
They should have kept straight on the highway where Mulvaney had told Finley to turn off. Was this just a question of Mulvaney sucking at her mapping skills?
Anna turned her attention to the other phone, that she’d kept active by touching the screen every few seconds. Scrolling back to the very beginning of the text history from “Him,” Anna sat there with her mouth dropped open.
Picture after picture.
Intimate pictures
Obviously not posed. Obviously from a third party, clandestine observer.
Anna opened the photo album on Mulvaney’s everyday phone and found pictures of her with what she would assume was Mulvaney’s husband. The date stamps made this seem correct. But the date stamps on the burner phone overlapped. Mulvaney was having an affair. Anna scrolled some more, and she found the lover’s face on Mulvaney’s everyday phone. And in this phone, there were a bunch of photos of a ballgame. The hubby, the wife/mistress and what looked an awful lot like best friend body language and dynamics between the other guy and the husband. Mulvaney was banging her husband’s best friend.
Okay, Mulvaney was getting blackmailed, which meant Mulvaney was an idiot.
“Him” must have known that Mulvaney would be on this assignment, and “Him” must have sent someone in to gather kompromat, as the Russians called it, on the woman.
Nope.
That must be backwards. “Him” must have gathered the compromising data, then exerted some power to get Mulvaney onto this task.
Yes, from the dates of the texts it had to work out that way. That meant it was someone connected to the assignments for this operation. Someone with power within the FBI. Though, that might not be true.
Probably wasn’t true.
Someone had asked a favor, couched it as something innocent, gave a wink and a nod. That seemed more probable. And something to be investigated. These phones would be important to discovering what had happened. She needed to get the phones back to her commander.
Anna read down the texts sent by “Him” trying to get a sense for his end game.
The instructions were spelled out. They were supposed to stop at that exact bathroom at an exact time. Anna went back in her memory and replayed the conversation where Mulvaney had chided Finley for driving too fast, and that she had a rest stop already calculated into her travels.
Anna checked the regular phone: Mulvaney had let the FBI know they were making the stop.
Anna looked at the topo map. Where did they lose signal from the cell phone towers? Was that McDonald’s the last place their GPS pinged? When the car disappeared for longer than the predetermined amount of time, would the FBI be out looking for the car? If they did, they’d be searching an area an hour and a half away. That would be some masterful strategic planning on “Hims’” part. And it showed that “Him” had access and knowledge not available to the average Joe. Losing the car’s location was planned. It said so right there in the texts.
Another fear-shudder raked through Anna. The good guys wouldn’t know to look in this direction. The bad guys, on the other hand, knew exactly where they’d be.
“Him’s” texts told Mulvaney that a tree would cross their path, and she was to use the binoculars in the trunk to “discover” that just past that tree about a hundred yards, there was a cabin up to the left with smoke coming from the chimney. She was to move the group in that direction to take shelter.
The yellow highlighter stopped about twenty miles ahead.
Ambush it was.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, that Mulvaney thought she’d come out of this unscathed. She should have taken this to the FBI immediately. She should have disclosed this to her husband immediately. She might have lost everything – her marriage, her career, but now she was dead.
How did that make anything better for anyone?
Anna turned when Finley moaned and rocked his head on the steering wheel.
Was he part of the problem or part of the solution?
Anna would have to think that through. She’d need to lay a trap and see if he stepped in it.
Chapter Five
Finley
Miracles did happen. Finley blinked open his eyes. He was staring at his lap and was filled with awe and hope. As the world went upside down, he’d kissed it all good-bye.
He’d assumed his death.
Maybe he was just left paralyzed instead? He wiggled his toes. Nope. Not dead. Not paralyzed. A miracle of a day.
He moved his hands to the steering wheel and pulled himself upright to look straight out the cracked front window at the landscape. The wind whipped waves of snowflakes through the air. So beautiful.
Snow was beautiful.
Clean.
Wholesome.
Thank you, God, for snow, he thought.
He looked down at the white blanket tucked around him and recognized that he was warm. The warmth radiated from his stomach. He moved his hand to touch his abdomen, realizing that the blanket lay over a Mylar emergency wrap, and he had a chemical heating pad on his torso.
He turned his head to thank Mulvaney, but there sat Zelda with Mulvaney’s gun in her hand. Cuffs and shackles gone.
His mind moved toward panic, but he stuffed those thoughts down. If Zelda wanted him to be dead, he’d be dead and not kept toasty warm.
Finley reached up to his neck where fabric made his skin itch.
“It was the best I could do in terms of a neck brace,” Zelda said. “You’d think they’d have a c-collar in the first aid kit, but no.”
Finley felt along and realized this was a rolled fleece sweater duct taped around his neck with something rigid tucked inside. “Thank you for everything,” he said quietly.
She nodded.
“Mulvaney?” he asked but he already knew the answer.
“She and Johnathan were thrown from the car.”
“You’re wearing her coat. She must be dead.”
“They both are,” she said dispassionately.
Finley licked his lips, and Zelda handed him a Coke. She pulled an Aleve bottle from her pocket. “Make sure you can swallow first, then I’ll give you a couple of these.”
Her phraseology told Finley that the tables had turned, and she saw herself as the one in charge. She would mete out what she was willing to let him have on her own terms. He thought back to his conduct with her from the point where she was put in the car. “I’m sorry about the bathroom,” he said. “I can tell you’re skilled, and Mulvaney wouldn’t have stood a chance against you. I was doing my job.”
“You were right. I’d planned to escape there.” Her face didn’t change, didn’t give him any information. “Good job,” she said.
Finley took a couple sips of soda. The bubbles cleared his throat; the thought of caffeine perked up his system. He held out his hand, and she dropped the bottle onto his palm. The gun never wavered. He tipped two pills onto his tongue and swallowed another swig of soda before he asked, “What’s the plan?”
He knew there had to be a plan; she had it in her eyes. She was just waiting for him to rouse himself.
“The plan is to get out of this alive,” she said matter-of-factly. “The plan is we work together, and fight for survival together. And we live.” She shoved the gun back in the holster she had on her hip.
Finley lowered his right elbow to touch his own gun and found the holster empty.
“I have your weapons,” she said.
“Okay,” Finley answered. He wanted to live. He was willing to work with her. He’d figure out the next chapter when they were out of survival mode.<
br />
Zelda picked up one of the four phones sitting on the dash. She pointed to two of them as she launched into a story complete with pictures on how they ended up in the middle of nowhere, away from the FBI’s eyes.
“How close is help?” he asked.
“Take your pick.” She opened a map and traced her finger along the road they’d just come from.
“That’s a good sixty miles back to the turn off, and I didn’t see anything between here and there.”
“Fifty-two mountain miles,” Zelda said.
Finley drew his fingers up the yellow line. “This is the cabin?”
“With the ambush. We’re behind schedule, now. Soon, they’ll be getting antsy, wondering where we are. I’m wondering how smart they are, though.”
“How’s that?”
“They’re dropping a tree across the road. If they have their vehicles up at the cabin they won’t be able to get past.”
“ATV?”
“Maybe a couple. They could send scouts. The weather is making things hairy. It might buy us some time. It also might slow us to a crawl.” She touched the binoculars hanging around her neck. “I paced out a bit. I saw smoke on the horizon. I can’t see the cabin, though. I haven’t picked up movement. Nice binoculars – long range, stabilizing, night vision. They must have cost the government a pretty penny. Glad they were in their protective case during our drop.”
Finley once again thought this woman was more than what caught the eye. More than long lashes and blue-green irises. More than soft looking lips. More than long silky hair and an athletic figure. He thought she could have leaned back on her looks and coasted through this lifetime instead of accelerating forward on whatever trajectory she’d found herself. Smart. Strategic. Skilled. If he had to be in a life or death, he was glad to have a partner equipped for survival. His mind got stuck around the word partner. He probably should shelve that term in all its definitions.
“You said there were some directional options?” Finley asked.
“This way is the easiest walk, fifty-two miles. Under these conditions, we could make it in three or four days if the SIC crew doesn’t nab us first.”
Finley swallowed. Southern Iron Cross – SIC was a good acronym alright.
“We’re on one hell of a backwoods, never-used road. I’m guessing it was put in as a political something or other back in the day. As far as I can tell it serves no purpose. This way,” she drew her finger up the map where they had been headed with the car, “about an equal number of miles to anything that shows up as a shack – granted this is a USGS topo map, so it’s decades out of date. But even if we find something along this route, the people up here are all kin or otherwise connected, so you can’t be sure you’ve found a friendly situation.”
“Understood. Your suggestion?”
“They’ll expect us to be blind to the ambush. That means they’ll expect us to sit tight, set up a camp and wait for the FBI to swarm in and save us. That’s what we should do. If we got stupid, we should take the path of least resistance, highest possibility of success, the road. If they can’t grab us at either spot, they’ll know we know.”
“Agreed. So, your alternative?”
She drew her finger to the north, in the same direction as the cabin then spun it off to the east, circumnavigating the ridge with the elevation lines so close together that it indicated climbing gear would be necessary to get over it.
“Around the other side, there’s a railroad track.” She moved her finger along the possible route. “Once we’re here, it would be another ten miles to a road crossing where we’d find help.”
“How far is all that?”
“Half the distance. Twice the risk. I expect timewise we’d come out about the same. Given our equipment and our physical states after the crash, I’m guessing we’d need about four days, and a good Samaritan willing to give us a lift. There’s also the possibility that at some point along this route,” she pointed at the wilderness, “we could pick up a signal that was strong enough to at least contact help.”
Finley patted his cargo pocket, then realized his phone was sitting on the dash next to the others.
“I turned them all off to conserve the battery. I figure once we’re mobile, we can turn one on for a few minutes every hour in the off chance we can get a signal.” As she handed him back his phone, the wind rocked the car.
Walking in this crap was going to be miserable. Having no end destination in sight was even worse.
“It’s handy that you and Mulvaney use the same batteries, we can use them to power your phone, later. I can’t get into hers anymore.”
Finley said, “But you just showed me the photos and texts.”
“I’ve been tapping the screen to keep that phone accessible. I had to use Mulvaney’s biometrics to open it. We’ll only be able only use the phone for emergency calls. I won’t be able to open it without her finger print. Unless, of course, I was willing to saw off the woman’s hand and carry it with me. And I’m just not to that point in this fiasco. Yet.” She pushed the map over to him. “Now that you’re awake, I’m going to go to the back of the car and pee. I’ll give you a minute to pick our route.”
“Me pick it?”
“You’re the arresting officer. This shit show is on your head.”
Finley unclasped his safety belt. He felt like he’d just been roused from a coma and asked to take a rocket engineering exam and if he failed, he’d earn himself the death penalty. He laughed under his breath at how outlandish this situation was. He checked the temperature on his tactical watch, and it was twenty-two. 13:20 hours. He must have clocked out for a good forty minutes.
Zelda sure covered a lot of ground in that time. She solved a puzzle, performed first-aid and developed escape and evade plans.
She handed the decision making over to him.
Interesting.
He knew she wanted to stay off the roads – the why of that he wasn’t clear on. She should be welcome at that cabin. She could walk in with him at gun point and be hailed the hero. But clearly, she thought that cabin was a death trap. For him? For her? Hmmm…
Why had she handed the planning over to him and his concussive mind?
This was some kind of game. He needed to reason things out. Who was the target of that ambush? It had to have been set up to save Johnathan and Zelda. They were the ones with the info to tell the authorities.
If Zelda felt endangered by the people up at the house, were these people the same people who were running Mulvaney? Or were these two groups at cross-purposes?
It would help if he knew a little more about the SIC group and their capabilities.
Finley was working pretty much in the dark. His involvement today was a favor for a buddy back at the bureau because the guy’s wife went into early labor. The SIC people probably didn’t know Finley was the driver. They could think it was his buddy driving.
A lot of questions. And the answers would make planning easier.
Thirty-ish miles of wilderness or fifty-plus miles of road. Four days of hard walking. Three nights in the open. They didn’t have the right equipment, or food. They couldn’t hunt with the guns along the way, it would tell everyone where they were. And he couldn’t imagine any animals running around in a near blizzard.
Yup. This was one hell of a fix.
Zelda came around and slipped back into the car. He just looked up from the map. “There’s an easier possibility.”
She quirked her eyebrows.
“We drag the bodies back to the car and set it on fire. They think we all died. We hide out in the woods and pop out at their camp wee-hours of the morning, steal a vehicle of one kind or another – a snowmobile, an ATV, a truck, and use that as our means of escape.
Zelda started laughing.
Finley was missing something.
She pursed her lips and shook her head to stop herself. “They’re crazy,” she said. “There are a lot of ex-military with their brains in a vice. There’s a l
ot of closed-loop thinking. I don’t know who all’s up there right now, but I can promise you that if they thought they were going to get to catch a federal officer today, they would’ve invited their elite soldiers. Dogs, guns, tripwire, maybe even an M-18 Claymore. There is no approaching their compound without dying like a fool.” She stared out the window in that direction. “The only thing I can think that might play in our favor is that they never expected that we wouldn’t make it to the tree, and they didn’t put trucks on the other side of their obstacle. They either need to bring trucks up the mountain in this storm, or they need to move the tree. And either one won’t get done before dark. We have time to put space between us until we bivouac tonight. Which route are we taking?”
“Let’s take the road less travelled,” Finley answered, looking out at the great expanse of mountains and trees. “Wilderness, ho.”
Chapter Six
Anna
The dying sunlight did little to illuminate much beyond Anna’s feet. Finley had his hand lightly on her shoulder, feeling for where she moved. Anna knew his head was killing him. He’d been walking with his eyes closed for the last mile. She was worried about him. He needed emergency medical attention. But that was days away. She could leave him and race out on her own to get help, hoping for the best. On her own there were options that he wasn’t in any physical shape to tackle. But she couldn’t chance leaving him. If he passed out, even for a little while, he could die of exposure.
That was if the SIC maniacs didn’t get hold of him first.
Anna was betting Finley was a good guy. Not a strong enough bet that she was willing to let down her guard, though.
Her heel tapped down on the snow-covered ground and slid out from under her. Anna jostled to regain her balance, grabbing at Finley. “Stop. It’s right in front of us.” The words jackhammered past her chattering teeth. Anna took in the black slit that wound crookedly through the expanse of grey and white. She had planned for them to set up camp down in this creek bed.