She twisted onto her back, glaring at him, and then scrambled to her feet, dusting off his touch like he had lice. “I’m fine.”
“You do need to watch your step around here. It is treacherous in places.” Agent Fontaine’s voice carried a hint of amusement.
Great. He was never a klutz. He was supposed to be an elite fricking warrior. “I tripped on a tree root.”
“Well, maybe you should pull out your night-vision goggles so you can see where you’re going?” Charlotte snapped.
Did she think he’d done it on purpose?
The two female agents started striding up the hill again.
“It was an accident,” he bit out.
“Of course, it was.” Charlotte glared back at him.
He swore. Charlotte Blood thought he’d deliberately tackled her to the ground like some boneheaded defenseman. She really had a low opinion of him.
A soft rustle of leaves drew Novak’s attention back to the woods. The hair on the back of his nape suddenly stood on end, and he couldn’t shake the sensation he was being watched.
Part of him wanted to go searching out whatever was giving him the heebie-jeebies, but as he glanced toward the others who were rapidly disappearing, he didn’t want to leave them unprotected—even though they were both professional law enforcement agents who would kick his ass if he suggested anything as sexist as him watching out for them. He jogged to catch up. Charlotte looked back and paused reluctantly to wait for him.
“We’re almost there,” said Fontaine.
Charlotte pointed down the slope to distant flickers of light through the forest. “Is that where the environmentalists are camped?”
Fontaine nodded. “It’s about half a mile straight down the hill. Loggers had planned to come into this part of the old growth forest this past summer and harvest the biggest trees but were forced to abandon the idea when some endangered birds were found nesting here. Protesters are convinced that the minute they leave, the logging company will come in regardless.”
Novak pressed his lips together in distaste. The idea of anyone cutting down these majestic trees left a bitter tang in his mouth. Not that his personal feelings mattered. Retrieving the body of the dead wildlife officer, protecting the innocent and federal property was his job. Upholding the law was the reason he was here.
Still, he liked trees. They didn’t talk back.
“You seem to know a lot about the situation,” Charlotte observed to the other woman.
Fontaine flashed a modest smile. “I’m interested in conservation. My first degree was in Biological Sciences, and I have a soft spot for the great outdoors.”
“Well, the loggers are going to have to postpone any activities on this mountain until we sort this out.” Charlotte spoke confidently.
“You think that could have been a motive?” Agent Fontaine asked.
“To stop the logging? Seems extreme.” Charlotte frowned.
Novak’s mood soured. He’d seen all sorts of reasons for death. Most of them were extreme. Standing around speculating solved nothing. “Let’s move it, people.”
“We were waiting for you to catch up.” Charlotte glared at him like he was slow on the uptake.
He huffed out a laugh. “You think I have trouble keeping up?”
“Keeping it up?” The look she gave him told him she was riling his ass and yet his ass still got riled.
“Funny. Ha, ha.” Heat seared his cheeks.
“Ready?” Charlotte sent him a pleased-with-herself smile and continued up the trail after Fontaine.
She was probably the most annoying female he’d had the displeasure of working with. This assignment was going to be purgatory.
“I was looking at something in the trees,” he said, giving in to the need to defend himself.
“What was it?” she queried.
Now he felt even more a fool. “Probably another deer.” He cleared his throat. Although he was sure there had been something else out there, lurking, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud.
Bigfoot for fuck’s sake.
“Come on. Let’s catch up with Fontaine. We don’t want to lose her,” Charlotte said impatiently.
He gritted his teeth. Right now, he wouldn’t care a single iota if he lost Charlotte, and another negotiator took over command. In fact, that would be just fine with him.
Another five minutes, and they saw the first indication they were in the right place. Sheriff’s deputies were staked out at various points along yellow crime scene tape that cordoned off a large area.
A guy took their names, and they signed into the log, putting paper booties over their footwear, before ducking under the tape.
Up ahead, the area was well lit with portable lights. Novak spotted a group of people near the body of a young woman and immediately sobered. This was no place for petty differences or dueling personalities.
A middle-aged man crouched beside the body. He looked up at their approach. “SSA Blood?”
Charlotte nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting out in the cold. We got here as soon as we could.” She glanced at Novak as if he’d been the one holding them back, and he wanted to roll his eyes. “This is SSA Novak. My colleague from HRT.”
The ME nodded. “I haven’t been here that long myself. We’re about to move the young woman into the body bag. Perhaps you can assist?” He directed the comment at Novak, and Charlotte bristled.
Being needed for his brawn was hardly a compliment. He sincerely doubted anyone would appreciate his Mensa IQ, not when there were bodies to move.
Novak scanned the nearby area before stuffing his cold weather gloves into a pocket and pulling on the latex gloves someone handed him. He approached the dead girl from her left side. A long gash covered the right side of her face. Her clothes had been interfered with. Coat removed—assuming she’d been wearing one, although she’d be foolish not to. Her jeans zipper was undone.
“She could have fallen against that tree trunk. Cracked her skull.” Novak pointed toward the nearby trunk, which was stained with something that might be blood.
The ME looked impressed. “Good eyes. That was my first thought.”
“Can you tell if she was assaulted?” Charlotte asked the ME.
“First glance suggests it’s possible, but it could also have been an accident. Until I get her on the table and then run some tests, it’s hard to say. She might have been attempting to relieve her bladder, tripped, and bashed her head on that tree as SSA Novak suggested.”
“It is easy to trip in these woods,” Charlotte said tightly.
Novak narrowed his gaze at her.
“Okay, let’s move her. Carefully now.”
Novak grasped the vic’s arm and helped four other men place her gently into the body bag. He gritted his teeth at the noise the zipper made as they closed it up. He’d heard it before, in field hospitals in the desert. That final, incongruous death knell.
He looked up to find Charlotte Blood watching him, her expression, for once, sympathetic. He brought the shutters down.
He didn’t need Charlotte Blood feeling sorry for him. He didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for him, period.
He removed his gloves and tossed them to an assistant who was collecting trash. The crime scene had been trampled. Good luck with the evidence people getting anything useful out of this war zone.
“Where’s the compound?” he asked Fontaine as the others got on with the grim task of trying to identify the young woman and establishing how she died.
“Quarter of a mile that way, other side of a small creek.” Fontaine moved away from the others, pointing west.
There were clumps of snow in some of the hollows. Not enough to accumulate on the ground but enough to remind them all that winter was on her way. She was late this year. Novak bet they’d usually be knee deep in the white stuff by now.
Fontaine walked another ten yards uphill and then swung her flashlight toward yellow and red markers laid out on the
ground about eight feet apart. “Here’s what we believe to be our UNSUB’s tracks along with those of FWO Jones.” She pulled lip balm from her pocket and rolled some on to protect against the cold.
“When the sheriff’s deputies arrived, they didn’t preserve the crime scene as well as they should have, but we managed to take photographs and a cast of one decent footprint from the UNSUB, but the ground is hard and rocky in most places, so we didn’t find as much as we’d hoped. We lost the tracks farther in.”
“One of our negotiators is former British SAS. He’s really good at tracking if we want him to come up here tomorrow and see what he can determine?” Charlotte Blood followed them closely, probably worried Novak might wander off and get lost.
“British SAS?” Fontaine asked with interest.
“He had to renounce his British citizenship to join the FBI, but he still has the cute accent.” Charlotte smiled.
Novak knew Max Hawthorne. Guy was a solid agent, but Novak had been a Warrant Officer in the Green Berets. He had some skills. He started in the direction of the compound.
“We should head back.” Charlotte raised her voice like he was a kid who wasn’t paying attention.
“I want to take a quick look.” He didn’t stop moving, eyes scanning the ground with his flashlight, but he could tell from the stride length that the UNSUB in question was moving at a flat-out run. Tracks were easy to follow when you knew where people were headed. After the initial zig zag through the trees, the UNSUB bore straight west.
Agent Fontaine added markers to each new print he indicated.
Novak reached the steep banks of a small creek. There were enough trees to provide cover between him and the building, so he wasn’t too worried about becoming a target. Still, he kept the light beam low to the ground and out to one side.
He scanned up and down the creek bed, then crouched. “Same footprints here but headed toward the direction where we found the girl.” He pointed at a faint indentation in the dry mud. “The footprints are about the same age, and he’s walking this time, not running.”
Was he trying to show off? Proving to these agents he was as good a tracker as Max Hawthorne? Probably. He shook his head in self-disgust.
He glanced through the trees. He was so close to where the fallen officer lay, he couldn’t resist the pull to go even closer. Memories of being forced to leave behind the body of one of his men after an overwhelming number of hostiles had lit up his platoon ate at his mind. He’d managed to persuade command to go back with reinforcements the next day but, by then, the body of Sergeant Frankie Duke had been taken and desecrated by the enemy. They’d never recovered his remains. Never given his grieving family the closure they needed by providing a body to bury.
Nausea gripped his gut, and he took two long, deliberate breaths through his nose to stop himself outwardly reacting. He stared at the ground again, searching for the calm focus he needed to do his job.
There were other footprints too, not many, but some. Novak didn’t know if they belonged to law enforcement personnel, people from the compound, tree huggers, or random hikers.
He carried on, cautiously. Fontaine and Blood followed behind, but they were both getting a little antsy about the proximity to the compound.
Now he was here, he may as well take a look and try to figure out the best and fastest method for retrieving FWO Jones.
“Novak,” Charlotte hissed as he hit the rise of the opposite bank of the creek.
He put his hand up for silence and, miracle of miracles, she did as requested.
There was that prickly feeling at the back of his neck again. Different than before but still very much a warning. The “No Trespassing” sign served as an additional caution.
A couple of sheriff’s deputies started to approach them from the south. Much too late, in his estimation. It proved that the area was not secure, and the people inside may already have slipped away. Novak let Fontaine deal with the cops. He couldn’t see anything through the dense thicket of trees. No lights at all, but that wasn’t surprising. He pulled a pair of night vision goggles out of a webbed pocket.
“Keep it down,” Novak instructed when the deputies got close enough to strike up a conversation with the other agents.
Charlotte glared at him.
He didn’t care.
He put on the goggles and stared into the green-tinged night. A dead man lay out in that darkness somewhere, murdered while doing his job. And the assholes inside the fortified bunker wouldn’t even let them retrieve his body? What the hell was with that?
No man left behind.
Not this time.
The subtle whir of something mechanical caught his attention. A camera. Pointed in his direction. Sonofabitch.
“Did you know they have surveillance cameras in these woods?” asked Novak, removing the night vision goggles so the others’ flashlights didn’t blind him.
“What?” Charlotte took a step toward him.
“What the hell?” One of the deputies rushed forward.
Novak pointed to the small gray box fifteen feet up in the tree. The deputy immediately pulled his weapon and took aim, but Novak pushed his arm back toward the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting rid of it!”
“Keep your weapon holstered. The FBI is in charge now. Unless your life or someone else’s is in imminent danger, keep your gun in its holster and your mouth zipped.”
The deputy blustered, but Novak ignored him and strode away. Charlotte came with him, and they both stared into the darkness toward the compound.
The local sheriff’s deputies were bullish and trigger happy. Novak understood that—hell, he was the same when the need arose. He understood what it was like to be pissed and want to get revenge on someone who’d shot at you or injured one of your own. But that wasn’t the most important thing at stake in this moment.
These survivalists were amped up, prepared to defend themselves from tactical assault. With nothing to lose, they would shoot at anything or anyone they considered a threat. How could he convince them he was unarmed and the only thing he was interested in—this time—was retrieving the dead man’s remains?
Maybe they wouldn’t shoot the female agents, but Novak wouldn’t take that chance. The only way the people entrenched here would believe for sure someone was unarmed was if they were stark naked.
Novak stilled, not liking the idea that lodged in his brain. But if the roles were reversed, this was the only way he’d trust someone wasn’t carrying a firearm.
He moved out to a place between two trees and heard the whir of a second camera following him. Both were now pointed at him. The people inside the compound were actively watching him.
“Novak…” Charlotte hissed.
“Stay behind cover.”
She muttered “Neanderthal,” but he ignored her.
He took off his basic equipment vest, then his fleece jacket, and undid the black tactical shirt, and the long-sleeved t-shirt he wore beneath. Tossed it in a pile behind him.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte asked, clearly aghast.
“I’m stripping.”
“Stripping?”
“Taking off my clothes.”
“I know what stripping means,” Charlotte snapped and damn if that didn’t have a grin pulling at his lips.
Next came his weapon’s holster, which really made him feel naked. He slowly placed his SIG Sauer on the ground on top of the clothes, making a show of it. Then his knife, and spare ammo, making sure they saw him remove his backup Glock-22 from his ankle holster.
Then he took off his thermal undershirt, and the icy air stung his flesh like killer bees. He bent over and removed his boots, along with the paper booties and socks, tossing them in the growing pile.
Below zero with the added lash of a razor-sharp wind—it was so cold he could barely breathe.
“SSA Novak, I don’t know what you think you are doing but—” Charlotte’s voic
e rose sharply, but she stopped talking as he shucked his long underwear. He tossed them behind him and heard a strangled exclamation.
He held up his hands in the age-old sign of surrender, looking over his shoulder at the other SSA who was open-mouthed and trying hard to keep her eyes north of his waist. Just as well, considering the temperature.
“I’m going to retrieve the body of FWO Jones while not presenting a threat to the safety of the people inside that compound. Everyone, stay back, keep your weapons out of your hands and do not make a move that will get me killed.” His voice rang out through the quiet of the night, then he added softly to Charlotte and Agent Fontaine, “You might want to close your eyes.”
He slowly turned a complete three-hundred-sixty degrees in front of the cameras to prove there was nothing taped to his back. He picked up his flashlight and very deliberately turned it on, so it shone over his body and onto the ground in front of him. He was lit up like a naked-human Christmas tree, freezing his damn balls off.
Yippee-kai-yay, motherfucker. Time to party.
Chapter Four
“What’s this joker doing?” Malcolm Resnick rose from his seat in front of the monitors.
TJ wasn’t a fan of his uncle under the best of circumstances. The man had wanted to throw him to the wolves earlier—despite the fact it was one of Malcolm’s buddies who’d pulled the trigger and killed the man who’d been chasing him.
His uncle hadn’t lived with them that long. One of his mother’s four brothers, Malcolm had turned up for the first time in March.
“Looks like he’s taking his clothes off.” One of the other men sitting in the surveillance room sniggered.
This mess was all TJ’s fault. He should have stayed and explained the situation to the lawman. Taken the consequences. Others might be hurt because he’d been upset and afraid. The authorities were going to blame him for both deaths, and they were probably right.
Kayla wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t arranged to meet her. The lawman wouldn’t be dead if TJ hadn’t run away.
The lump in his throat felt serrated and sharp-edged as he swallowed. How could she be dead? The effort of holding back tears, the pain in his chest that made it difficult to breathe, was killing him. What had happened to her?
Cold Wicked Lies Page 3