Boneyard Ridge (12 page)

This place was well-hidden, she thought. People who lived within easy walking distance might go a lifetime without realizing this cabin and its enigmatic owner existed at all.

By design, she thought, sparing a glance toward Hunter. He stood near the fireplace heater, his head bent as he listened to the man named Quinn.

“I understand,” he said finally, slanting a quick look at Susannah. She turned her head back to the window before their gazes connected. “I’ll see if I can make that happen.”

She waited to see if the conversation continued, but after several seconds, she realized he’d already hung up the phone. She angled another look his way.

He was still standing by the hearth, one arm propped up on the mantel. His gaze seemed fixed on the stone floor of the hearth, his expression grim.

“What does he want to do?” she asked.

His gaze flicked up and locked with hers. “He wants me to find a way back into the hotel. We’re no closer to knowing what they were planning than we were last night when everything went down. And we’ve lost almost a day’s worth of investigation.”

Her mind rebelled at the thought. The place would be swarming with cops, and they wouldn’t stand still and let him explain why he hadn’t shown up to work the morning after the hotel’s director of events and conferences had gone missing. “How’re you supposed to do that without getting caught?”

One dark eyebrow ticked upward. “Is that concern I hear, Ms. Marsh?”

Annoyed by his flippant tone, she pressed her lips shut and didn’t answer.

His shoulders rose and fell on a sigh. “I’ll figure something out. I have the map of the hotel layout—”

“Does the map show the secret entrance in the executive parking deck?” she asked.

His eyes darkened. “No, it doesn’t. There’s a secret entrance?”

“I don’t know how secret it is, really—I’m sure that the people who run hotel operations know it’s there. But it must be fairly secret, because they don’t cover it with security and it’s never locked.”

“And you know this how?”

“I’m an executive.”

“But you park all the way down in the employee parking lot.”

“So?”

“And you made a note in your phone about joining a gym.” He turned to look at her, his gaze sweeping over her in a quick but thorough assessment. “It’s the chocolate stash, right? Gained a pound or two, so you’re parking in the lower forty so you have to get some extra exercise?”

“You were right. You’re definitely not a gentleman.”

“I did warn you.” He pushed away from the fireplace and crossed to where she stood by the window, his movements slow and deliberate, as if giving her the chance to flee if she wanted to. But she couldn’t seem to move.

The heat of him poured over her again, and she felt the strangest sense of relief, as if she’d been waiting for him to return. He lifted one hand and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And in case it means anything, there’s not one damn thing wrong with your body.” His lips quirked with a crooked smile. “Chocolate looks good on you.”

“Don’t jump the gun there, hotshot.” She flashed him a cheeky grin, even though her insides were quivering. “It’s a little early in our acquaintance for you to be picturing me in chocolate.”

The phone he still held in his left hand buzzed again. He closed his eyes, taking a swift breath through his nose. “Really?” he muttered to the phone, frustration keen in his voice.

She turned back to the window, waiting for him to drift away again. But his heat remained, cocooning her as his gravelly voice rumbled close to her ear. “What now?”

She heard the faint, tinny sound of a voice in response, though she couldn’t make out any words. But there was no mistaking the crackle of tension that ripped through the room a second before Hunter’s arm wrapped around her shoulders and dragged her backward, away from the window.

“What?” she managed, before he pressed his palm against her mouth, silencing her.

Then she heard the footsteps. Heavy thuds on the wooden porch outside, moving closer. A pause as thick as molasses in December, then a nerve-shattering trio of raps on the door.

“Anybody home?” The voice was low, drawling. Unfamiliar.

“Not a word,” Hunter whispered in her ear.

Chapter Nine

It was impossible to determine friendlies from enemies from the cockpit of an ordinary commercial helicopter gliding over a thicket of evergreens and leaf-shedding hardwoods at a hundred miles an hour, but Alexander Quinn had decided that anybody approaching the well-hidden cabin where his newest operative had holed up should be considered a potential threat. So when he’d spotted the two men heading toward the cabin during the last pass-by, he called Hunter Bragg’s secondary burner phone and gave him a heads-up.

He hadn’t bothered with the first phone he’d given Bragg shortly before the man went undercover. He’d already established the line of contact between that phone and his own had most likely been compromised.

But by whom? It infuriated Quinn to think that someone might have gotten past his byzantine security system, even though people had been raising eyebrows at his choices of operatives ever since the doors to The Gates first opened. The son of a con artist had been one of his first hires. An actual con artist had followed. A couple of slightly disgraced FBI agents—disgraced not by dishonor, of course, but by putting honor above the bureau—had joined the motley crew. A former CIA double agent who’d spent time on the FBI’s most-wanted list for terrorism in South America. An ex-Marine living under suspicion of an eighteen-year-old murder. A former Diplomatic Security Service agent with a record of fighting the system.

All good agents for The Gates, or so he’d thought.

Had he been wrong?

He heard the sound of three loud raps, then a whisper, barely audible, on the other end of the chopper’s satellite phone. “Not a word,” Bragg whispered, apparently to the woman.

He heard the faint rustle of movement, the snick of a door opening and closing. Then the line went dead.

He put the satellite phone back in its holder and looked at the other passenger in the chopper. The man across from him raised an eyebrow but didn’t bother speaking. The roar of the rotors made dialogue impossible without using headsets, and neither of them was inclined to risk putting anything into the ether that might be intercepted. It wasn’t likely the strutting imposters of the so-called Blue Ridge Infantry had the equipment to snag in-air chatter, but Quinn wasn’t sure they were working alone.

Someone had changed the plan for Susannah Marsh’s murder in the middle of the game, and only a chance meeting with another BRI operative, one neither Quinn nor Bragg had known was in place at the hotel, had allowed Quinn’s agent to get the woman to safety in time.

They had to be very careful how they proceeded from here on. He’d keep contact to a minimum and trust Bragg to run the operation on the ground.

The Army vet didn’t realize it, but Quinn’s decision to tap him as an operative for The Gates hadn’t been a fluke or even an act of pity, as Quinn suspected Bragg believed. Before the IED explosion that had nearly taken Bragg’s life and ended his Army career, Bragg had been an exceptional warrior, valued by his men and his superiors alike for his quick mind and fearless leadership.

Quinn believed a man’s character didn’t change just because he’d taken a body blow in combat. Bragg might have been having trouble getting back on his feet after the injury, but the warrior was still there, aching to get out and do what he’d been trained to do.

Quinn could use that warrior in the mission he’d undertaken. He sure as hell hadn’t been willing to let Hunter Bragg waste away in a quagmire of guilt and anger without giving him a chance to salvage that part of himself that still had much to offer the world.

Now he’d just have to trust that he hadn’t overestimated the man’s ability to swim instead of sink.

* * *

T
HE CELLAR BENEATH
the cabin was small, taking up only half the length of the house, but beyond the stone walls of the basement room was a narrow tunnel carved in the rocky soil and reinforced with concrete. There was an outside exit, if they were forced to use it, well-hidden fifteen yards past the tree line east of the cabin. He hoped they wouldn’t have to use it, but if the person or persons still knocking on the cabin door decided to come in and take a look around, they’d have to make a run for it.

They hadn’t turned on any lights that morning, the daylight filtering through the windows the only illumination, but the heaters had run all night. Even though he’d flipped the switch on the heater in the front room, nobody who entered the front room would be fooled that the cabin was uninhabited.

At least there was a dead bolt on the front door. If their unexpected visitor was a civilian searcher, the locked door might be enough to send him on his way. An unlocked door might have been better, and a cold parlor, but that option wasn’t available.

He’d hoped the secluded cabin would be far enough from the hotel or any well-used hiking trail to be a reasonable hiding place.

He’d underestimated the reach of the Ridge County Sheriff’s Department.

“Who do you think it is?” Susannah’s voice was a faint whisper in the darkened cellar. There was no light here in the cellar at all, though he’d grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen on his way downstairs.

“Probably someone from the search party for you.”

“I thought we were far enough from the hotel that they wouldn’t come out here.”

“So did I. We were apparently wrong.”

Her hand closed around his wrist, cool and remarkably steady, given the way she’d trembled beneath his touch earlier as he led her downstairs. “What if it’s not someone from the search party?”

“I’m not sure it matters to us either way. We can’t risk being found.”

“Not even by the cops?”

“Do you know which cops you can trust and which ones will sell you out in a heartbeat?”

She was silent for a long moment. “No.”

There was an odd tone to her voice that piqued his curiosity, but he shoved his interest to the back of his mind to consider later. Right now, he had to figure out what to do if he heard someone enter the cabin above.

The floorboards creaked quite audibly when someone was in the cabin overhead. He’d learned that fact when Janet had helped him move his stuff into the place when he first returned from Afghanistan and decided to make it his getaway. It wasn’t officially in his name; Janet still held the deed. It wouldn’t be the first place Billy Dawson looked for him, since he’d let Billy think he was estranged from Janet, that he’d hated her job with the county prosecutor’s office and she’d hated his political views. He’d hoped it would be enough to protect his sister from trouble if his undercover work went belly-up.

God, he wished he could talk to her right now, let her know everything would be okay.

“Either way, whether they come in or not, we can’t stay here after this,” he murmured. “You realize that, don’t you?”

She remained silent, though her fingers tightened around his wrist.

“I know you don’t trust me. But I’m asking you to take a chance here. Even if the people knocking at the door go away, we can’t risk staying here now that someone knows this place exists. They may go find the cops, get someone who can break in and take a look around. Sooner or later, they’ll connect this cabin to me and then they’re going to turn it upside down.”

“Because you’re their primary suspect in my abduction.”

He nodded. “I go missing from the hotel the same day you go missing? Hell, yeah, they’re going to think the worst.”

“Would they be wrong?”

“Technically, I guess not.”

They fell silent, the only sound in the small cellar the whisper of their breathing. Overhead, the cabin remained eerily quiet.

“Do you think they went away?” Her whisper broke the stillness a few moments later, plucking his nerves.

“I don’t know,” he admitted softly. “I need to go up there and check. Can I trust you to stay put?”

“Nowhere to go but up there with you.”

He hadn’t told her about the outside exit, he realized. He probably should tell her now, but he wasn’t sure he could trust her not to make a run for it. She was strong-willed and hardheaded, traits he ordinarily liked in a woman—unless those traits led her to make risky choices.

But leaving her stuck down here, defenseless, if he met with trouble upstairs would be putting her in harm’s way. She was a smart woman, and more resourceful in a crisis than he’d thought. She had a right to make her own decisions, either way.

“There’s a door hidden behind that old broken armoire in the corner. When you open the armoire, you’ll see it’s empty and all the shelves have been removed. Just step into it. There’s a pressure switch in the bottom that opens the door to a tunnel that leads to a door outside.” He put the flashlight in her hand. “If I’m not back in five minutes, you go. It leads to an escape hatch in the woods.”

She was silent for a long moment before her fingers closed over the flashlight, brushing his. “Who are you?”

“The better question might be, who was my grandfather?” he murmured. “He worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the height of the Cold War.”

“A scientist?”

“A maintenance man, but he saw and heard enough to be paranoid about nuclear war, so he did what he could, in his limited way, to build himself a shelter in case the Soviets dropped the big one.” He couldn’t hold back a wry smile, even though she couldn’t see it in the dark. “His understanding of nuclear fallout was clearly limited, but you can’t fault him for his will to survive.”

“Okay. Five minutes.”

As he started toward the stairs to the main floor, she grabbed his arm, her fingers tight. He stopped, turning back toward her, and their bodies collided with a light thump, the softness and the steel of her pressing intimately against him. He found it suddenly impossible to breathe.

“Be careful,” she whispered, her fingers convulsing briefly around his arm before she let him go and backed away, robbing him of her soft heat.