Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  “But they already do.” She told him about her cell phone disappearing from the side of the stream during the fifteen minutes she was inside the cabin with him.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. The only other possibility is I tucked it in my pack without thinking, and Westover or Joyce stole my phone. Paul Westover is kind of an ass, but I don’t see him running a stolen cell phone racket.” Outside the vehicle, trees sped by, blurred by streaks of water. She mentally added the price of a new phone to the tally of what helping Alec Ravissant had cost her.

  The car took an unexpected right turn, and her body flushed with adrenaline. She’d been waiting for this moment for months. “You’re taking me to the compound?” Her throat was so dry, she’d barely been able to say the words.

  “No. We’re going the back way to your cabin. The perimeter road is faster.”

  Disappointment settled in, and she wondered if she could get the restraining order dropped simply because he’d taken this shortcut. Probably not.

  “Don’t get any ideas. The restraining order is to protect you. I’m not about to let it go. But right now I’ve got problems, and I need your help.”

  Was she about to become…allied with Alec Ravissant? An insane notion if ever there was one.

  “If you suspect your own people of running you off the road and leaving you for dead, should you even stay on the compound? Isn’t that the lion’s den?”

  “Yeah, but I’m the lion king. It’s my den. There’s a reason I was attacked before I reached my compound.” He glanced at her askance, his focus on the road ahead, and she caught his wry smile. “Despite what you might think given the condition you found me in yesterday, I’m a damn good soldier. They caught me off guard, which won’t happen again. Anyone who attacks me or what’s mine will pay.”

  He made the turn to the compound, but before they reached the intersection with the perimeter road, he pulled to the side and put the SUV in park. They were probably less than a mile from the concertina-wire-topped fence that surrounded the structures that were popularly referred to as “the compound,” but in actuality, Raptor’s entire thirty-thousand-acre swath of pristine wilderness was the true compound. The hundred or so enclosed acres were only a tiny portion of Alec’s vast holding.

  What must it be like to be Alec Ravissant? To drive down this road and be the lion king—although after last night, she’d always think of him as the tiger king—knowing everyone on his land must answer to him, and his backyard was a paltry thirty thousand acres in the heart of Alaska. And this was just one of Raptor’s five compounds.

  He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number, then hit the speaker button. A man answered right away. “Alec, good to hear from you—you had us all scared for a bit.”

  “Thanks, Lee,” Alec said, “Listen, I need a favor. I need you to find a cell phone that disappeared last night.”

  “That happens to be one of my specialties, but I’m curious why you aren’t having Mothman do it.”

  Mothman was the nickname of the compound tech wizard. He handled all the computer systems. Openly gay, not former military, and not an operative, he missed social cues because he probably was on the mild end of the autism spectrum, and he had a good heart even if he was condescending at times. He didn’t fit with the other employees who hung out at the Tamarack Roadhouse, but he went anyway because, like Isabel, he had trouble connecting with people but still felt compelled to be among them. Mothman was Isabel’s litmus test for who the bigoted pricks were among the operatives.

  Anyone who was a dick to Mothman was beneath contempt.

  She bristled even at the suggestion Mothman could somehow be part of the corruption within the compound, but knew ruling him out was her own foolish bias. Everyone was a suspect. Including Mothman and Alec Ravissant.

  “I vetted Mothman’s work when I was there last month,” the man on the phone—Lee, Alec had called him—added. “His code is solid.”

  “I’m not sure if I can trust Mothman, but I know I don’t trust others who have access to the server,” Alec said. “I don’t want any of my people to know about this search.”

  “Fair enough. What’s the number?”

  Alec met Isabel’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. “Iz? What’s your number?”

  Something strange settled in her belly at his casual shortening of her name. It implied friendship. A peculiar notion. She cleared her throat and recited her number for Lee.

  “What type of phone, and who is your service provider?”

  She gave him the necessary information.

  “Can you estimate when you used it last and where you were?”

  She frowned. “The last call I made was Wednesday night—I called the Alaska DNR, Fairbanks office, to check in after surveying by myself all day. I keep it turned off when I’m surveying, and there’s no ready cell coverage—so the battery won’t drain. I turned it on last night around eight thirty p.m. I didn’t have any bars, but I sent myself a text to see if there was even faint service. It didn’t go through.”

  “Do you know what happens with your phone when texts don’t send? Do they wait in a queue for a signal, or do they sit in drafts until you hit Send again?”

  “They wait in a queue for the next signal. I sometimes set it to send me a text when I’m out of range, so my phone will buzz the moment I’ve got coverage.” She’d done that on some of her illegal forays onto Raptor land—trying to narrow down the area where Vin might have been when he sent his last text. It was more efficient than stopping every hundred feet and checking for service.

  Lee let out a low whistle. “Perfect. Unless whoever has your phone deleted the text, it’ll go out the next time it’s in range and turned on. It may already have been sent. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “Thanks, Lee,” Alec said. “Call me if you get a hit.”

  “Will do.”

  With that, Alec hit the End button and set the phone in the console. “Don’t tell anyone you noticed your phone is missing.”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “I, um, already did. I told Westover. And Joyce.”

  Alec shrugged. “Westover probably won’t do anything about it. Will Joyce talk?”

  “I have no idea.” She frowned. “I don’t know her that well, but she was nice to me today. A surprise, because she’s never been very friendly before, but then, I’m not the most popular girl in town.” She cleared her throat. “Trying to shut down the largest employer within fifty miles tends to piss people off.”

  “I can imagine,” Alec said dryly.

  She grimaced. “Exactly how much do you hate me?” She meant it as a joke, but her question didn’t sound funny even to her ears.

  Those jewel-toned blue eyes met hers and were every bit as compelling as described. “I don’t hate you at all. I’ve been angry with you. Frustrated. I was scared as hell when I heard you interrupted a live-fire training exercise, but I’ve never, ever hated you.”

  “I didn’t know it was live fire,” she admitted in a soft voice. When it happened, when she’d disrupted the training and was arrested—the first time—it had been easier to let everyone think she’d done it on purpose. Better than admitting she was an idiot. It was effective, adopting the zealot’s mantle because it got the attention of Alec’s political opponent, who up to that point had ignored her plea for help.

  But the politician had glommed on to the story of the sister so determined to prove Raptor was negligent in her brother’s death, she was willing to risk her life to force an investigation. Norm Stimson, a congressman from Maryland, seized the opportunity and pushed for closure of the compound while safety procedures were checked. After all, he’d argued, if an unarmed fool of a woman could infiltrate a live-fire training exercise, so could ISIS or al Qaida militants who wanted to know exactly what Alec Ravissant was teaching American soldiers about how to fight terrorist groups.

  She wanted Alec to know she didn’t have a death wish. He’d called her crazy t
his morning, and it had bothered her. A lot. “I didn’t know you had live-fire trainings and I didn’t know I was down range during such a drill.”

  “I’d wondered,” he said. “Especially after meeting you, seeing how well prepared you are for the wilderness. It didn’t mesh with the conventional wisdom—that you were determined to martyr yourself for your cause.” He frowned. “For national security reasons, we keep a pretty tight lid on the types of training we do here, which is why it isn’t commonly known we have live-fire zones.”

  “Was live fire part of Vin’s last training?”

  “No. Vin took off during a straight survival training.”

  She stiffened and reached for the car door. “Vin didn’t simply ‘take off,’ and I thought you were ready to believe that.”

  He put out a hand to stop her. “Poor choice of words. For the last year, I’ve believed that’s exactly what happened, and my brain hasn’t caught up and changed verbs yet. I’m sorry.”

  She met his gaze. He looked sincere, but what did she know of Alec Ravissant and his expressions? She settled back in her seat; the rain had lightened to a sprinkling mist, but she still didn’t want to walk in it.

  He put the car in gear, and they continued down the road. “I met your brother, you know.”

  She nodded. She knew all about Vin’s meeting with the tiger king.

  “Will you tell me about him?”

  She glanced at his handsome profile. She wanted to say no. She wanted to shut him out. To not give him a piece of Vin to hold on to, because he’d refused her all those months ago when she’d first reached out to him. Yet, he was here now, asking the questions she’d wanted all along. “You didn’t come to his funeral.”

  “I regret only three things in my life. Not attending your brother’s funeral is one of them.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “What are the other two?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then tell me why you didn’t show.”

  He tapped the steering wheel and focused on the road in a way that made her think he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he said, “The campaign had only just started. I didn’t plan to run. But then, no one expected the Maryland Senate seat to be up for grabs. Everyone figured the woman who’d filled Talon’s open seat would run again when the term expired.” He paused. “Basically, I was roped into running before I’d even decided if running for the Senate was what I wanted to do. I was stupid and listened to the advisor my father hired, and my attorney, rather than my own gut.” He paused again, this time meeting her gaze. “I should have been there to pay my respects to a fine soldier, who never should have died.”

  They turned off the perimeter road and onto the narrow dirt track that would eventually meet up with the road to her cabin. She’d rented the cabin when she first moved to Alaska because it was adjacent to the compound. That it was isolated in the middle of the most beautiful wilderness on earth had been a bonus.

  “You like it out here?” Alec asked.

  “Yes. For now.” But she’d been here for nearly ten months. The nomad in her was ready to move again.

  He pulled up in front of her carport—empty thanks to her truck being in the impound lot. “I’m working on getting your truck back for you. It will be a few days.”

  She should probably say thank you, but it was his fault she didn’t have her truck to begin with, so instead she just nodded.

  Alec gazed at her small log cabin, then glanced around. To one side, evening sun broke through the clouds and glinted on the solar panels on the roof. To the other, a faint rainbow arced across the meadow. “If you put this place on a postcard, people would think it was too picturesque to be real.”

  She smiled. The late summer wildflowers were in full bloom across the meadow, and even in the light rain, a pair of caribou had settled down in the tall grass, their large, fuzzy antlers giving away their position. Caribou were terrible at hide-and-seek.

  She grabbed her backpack from the backseat and climbed out of the car.

  “No power lines?” Alec asked, following her to the front door.

  “No. Completely off the grid. The solar panels provide limited power for Wi-Fi, my computer, things that must run on electricity, but the big stuff—refrigerator, range, furnace, water heater, washer, and dryer—those are all gas powered. Even the light fixtures are gas.”

  It had taken some getting used to—electricity as a luxury item—but she’d come to appreciate the quiet and lack of lights on appliances that broke the darkness. Before she’d moved to Alaska, even her toaster oven had had a clock and red glowing light. Now she used the camping toaster rack on the gas cooktop if she wanted crisp bread.

  Chores took longer, but the trees were too tall for a satellite dish, so she had no TV. It wasn’t like she was in a hurry to finish washing the dishes so she could sit on the couch and do nothing. Instead she listened to audiobooks from the library on her battery-powered CD player as she did chores. Her life was solitary but busy, and at least one night a week, she found herself in the Tamarack Roadhouse, because even she could have too much solitary.

  Inside her cabin, while she lit the gaslights, Alec circled the small living room, stopping in front of the mantel, where a picture of Vin and her had pride of place. He wore his Army dress uniform, with his arm draped around her shoulder. To even the casual observer it would be clear they were siblings—he had the same green eyes, obnoxious orange hair, curls, and freckles—although his military buzz meant he lacked the curls in that snapshot.

  Growing up, more than one person had tagged them Raggedy Ann and Andy—they’d both hated the comparison—but at least with a four-year age difference, they’d been far enough apart in school that it hadn’t been a big issue.

  “I’d like to read the emails he sent you,” Alec said. “The ones about Raptor.”

  She nodded. “They’re on the computer. Let me shower, then I’ll pull them up for you.”

  “I could read them while you shower. It would save time.”

  She frowned at him. Did she really want to give him access to her computer while she was in the shower? There were at least a dozen files that contained incriminating evidence—her notes and map database detailing her forays onto Raptor property searching for Vin’s cave—that he could use against her.

  But surely, if he believed her, he’d understand why she’d repeatedly violated the restraining order. And letting him read the emails would be the key to convincing him.

  She could skip the shower and go over everything with him now. But she felt rancid after hiking for an entire day, hauling him, fighting him, sleeping on a rotting wood floor, hiking to Westover’s patrol car—in handcuffs no less—then spending the day in a jail cell. Add to that getting rained on. She was chilled and damp, even though Alec had turned up the heat in the car.

  She wanted a shower so badly, she could cry.

  And she really didn’t want him to wonder why she was reluctant to leave him alone with her computer.

  She sighed and set her laptop on the coffee table. “They’re all in the mail directory called ‘Vincent.’ Do you want a drink or anything while I clean up?”

  “No. I’m fine. Take your time.”

  She nodded and left him alone with her computer, well aware that if he peeked in other files, he’d have everything he needed to send her right back to jail.

  8

  Alec watched her leave, fully aware she’d been reluctant to give him access to her computer. He couldn’t really blame her, but at the same time, he was curious if it was a generic discomfort or if there was something specific that put the worry lines between her brows.

  He rubbed his own forehead. The pain had faded hours ago, and the swelling around his eye was almost gone. He was stupidly eager to see her after she’d showered. With her hair no longer confined to a wilting braid, he’d at last find out if her hair was as curly as he suspected.

  He was an idiot for even wondering. He shouldn’t give a crap what she l
ooked like, and he certainly shouldn’t give a damn about what she thought of him. But he did. And it wasn’t for any good reason. In fact, it was for the worst reason he could imagine.

  Put simply, he wanted her in a very raw, coarse, and basic sort of way.

  But there was nothing simple about wanting Isabel. His campaign manager would freak, for starters. She’d insisted he not date at all until after the election. They didn’t need the extra scrutiny. Carey was cautious and hated surprises, but she was a damn fine campaign manager, so Alec put up with her edicts.

  Isabel was Carey’s worst nightmare—she’d already derailed the campaign once when she got his opponent to demand an inspection of the safety procedures of all the trainings conducted on the compound. Now Isabel was under suspicion of having abducted Alec—which was completely his fault—and for violating the restraining order—also his fault—he had obtained to protect her from her own foolishness. When the press got the full story, unless he’d untangled Isabel’s legal problems, he’d look like an ungrateful ass. Which, if he remembered correctly, was exactly what Isabel had called him.

  She would wreak havoc with his campaign, but he wanted her anyway. A sure sign he’d been a fool to give in to his dad’s pressure to run for office. He wasn’t cut out for playing by any rules except the rules of engagement in warfare.

  He dropped onto the couch, clicked on the mail directory, and found the subfolder she’d indicated. He scrolled to the bottom of the email list, looking at the dates. Vincent Dawson had emailed his sister regularly when he was in the Army, and then more frequently after he left the service fifteen months ago. Alec opened a few emails from Vincent’s last months in the Army, finally finding one the soldier had sent when he’d visited the Alaska compound for specialized combat training sixteen months ago.

  Izzy,

  In all my years in the military, this is the most intense training I’ve ever attended. I could swear, sometimes, when we’re deep in the woods, it feels like I’m in Afghanistan. It’s hard to describe because the landscape is different, but the woods are just as freaking cold. Mountains are mountains. And I don’t know how they do it, but damn if some of the houses in the simulated village don’t smell like that shithole place. I think they pump in the smell to mess with our minds.