Deadly Sight (16 page)

The lengthy alphanumeric sequence was written on a piece of paper taped to the desk. Gray read it off quickly. In a moment, his monitor flickered to life and an image that looked a lot like weather radar popped up.

A white arrow cursor tracked across the screen, stopping on a blob of yellow. Barrett was speaking again. “Here’s the target. If you’ll notice, these eight hot spots are moving right to left across your screen in a standard search pattern.”

He watched for a few seconds. “How is it they haven’t spotted the target? They all but walked on top of him.”

“He must be hidden.”

Gray pictured the forest surrounding the Proctor compound. There were stands of brush here and there, but not thick enough cover to hide an adult from a determined search effort. Besides, he’d bet Proctor’s men knew every square inch of the area. They’d know exactly where to look for a hidden observer.

“Is it possible to zoom in on the target?” he asked Barrett.

A snort was his only answer. The image zoomed in rapidly until the yellow blob nearly filled the screen. It resolved into a distinctly human shape. Although, the guy’s posture was strange. Gray stared at it for several seconds until it dawned on him that the guy was hugging something.

“Looks like he’s up a tree, sir,” Barrett commented.

Of course. Questions exploded across Gray’s brain. Who else was out there spying on Wendall Proctor? Did he and Sam have an ally they didn’t know about, or was this an enemy of Wendall’s, maybe the real problem behind the goings-on at the Proctor compound? He asked tersely, “Can you get a visual on the guy’s face?”

“I’ll have to switch feeds. Stand by.”

Gray’s screen went black for several seconds. It flickered to life again, and he was momentarily disoriented by a gray-green blob. A pine tree.

Barrett zeroed in on the evergreen tree in the middle of the screen, quartering it methodically from base to tip. In the third screen shot of foliage, Gray glimpsed a flash of color. A speck of neon yellow peeked out from below a branch. The person in question was high up in the tree, clinging to the trunk, mostly hidden in shadow and overhanging branches. But a light breeze ruffled the needles and a brief flash of a face came into view.

“Can you capture that image?” Gray asked quickly.

“Already on it.” The surveillance operative was working quickly as various pixilated images flashed across the monitor and disappeared as fast as they loaded. Finally, a slightly fuzzy image began to form on the screen. Tree branches, pine needles and then white skin. And then...red hair.

Holy—

Gray leaped up out of his chair, knocking it backward into the wall violently.

“Sir? Agent Pierce?”

Gray was out of the room and tore up the stairs without hearing anything else Barrett said.

Chapter 12

G
ray alternately begged Sam to be safe and cursed her for her stupidity. What was she thinking, strolling right up to the fence of the Proctor compound by herself like that? She knew Wendall was paranoid and security-crazed. Did she want to get caught? Hell, she was going to blow the whole operation. He was going to kill her when he got his hands on her.

Please, God, let him get to her first. He didn’t even want to contemplate what would happen to her if Proctor got a hold of her. Was the bastard sick enough to torture a prisoner? Gray recalled that unblinking, almost reptilian stare of Proctor’s and shuddered. All the guy would have to do was put Sam in a brightly lit room and take away her shades.

Would she actually go blind or just be debilitated by blinding pain? He’d seen the strength of the numbing eye drops she sometimes used, and they were ample testament to just how painful bright light really was to her. Not that she ever complained about it. He’d been dragging her around all over the place during the day without giving it a second thought. Just how much had he hurt her?

He flinched as last night came back to him in all its inglorious detail. Lord knew he’d hurt her last night. Not physically. She’d been at pains to assure him of that. But emotionally? It would be a long time before he forgot the devastated look in her golden eyes as she’d slipped out of his room and out of his life. He was a born-again bastard, all right. He didn’t deserve a girl like her.

Almost as quickly as the thought occurred to him, its absurdity struck him. He didn’t deserve any woman. He’d utterly failed his wife. Let her be tortured and killed on his watch. Even now, he shied away from remembering the horrendous things the killer had done to her before she died. He could only pray that soft, fragile Emily had passed out fast.

The road topped the ridge and dipped into Proctor’s valley. The Bronco fishtailed as it hit a bad patch of loose gravel at high speed, but he wrestled it back under control and kept his foot on the gas pedal. Surely Sam had the sense to approach from this direction and not drive right up the guy’s driveway.

As the road narrowed and twisted closer to the Proctor property, he was forced to slow down. He didn’t spot the Ladybug, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t out here. He approached as close to the area currently being searched as he dared and hid the Bronco quickly. He opened the spare tire storage compartment and took out the sawed-off shotgun hidden there. He filled his pockets with spare shells and headed out.

Where are you, Sam?

He took his bearings from the tallest mountaintops around him. She and the men hunting her should be off to his right. He didn’t relish having to slip past the tight line of men to reach her, but it wasn’t like he had any choice.

The farther into the woods he moved without hearing or seeing any of Proctor’s men, the more nervous he got. Had the bastards already found Sam and left the area with her? Dread made him so jumpy he could hardly force himself not to take off running toward her.

He glimpsed a bare flicker of movement ahead. And then another. And another. The search team was lined up practically shoulder to shoulder and moving directly toward him. No way was he getting past these guys to reach Sam. And no way could he outshoot them all. There’d been eight men on the satellite imagery.

Time for Plan B. He looked around frantically for some soft soil. There. He ran over to it and stomped his right foot down on the patch of dirt, his toe pointed back toward where he’d just come from. He dashed a few yards farther toward the Bronco and broke a few stems of dead grass. Another dash and he picked a thread off his shirt and draped it over a tree branch at shoulder height.

The trick was not to make the trail too obvious. The men behind him would have to have a decent tracker with them to follow his trail. Satisfied he’d laid down a big fat arrow for the bad guys to follow, he shifted course and sprinted at a ninety-degree angle to the trail he’d laid down, making sure to leave no tracks at all. Now he just had to get around the end of their search line.

He’d run for nearly five minutes when he judged he’d passed well beyond the last man in line. He angled back toward the Proctor compound and Sam. She was
so
dead when he caught up with her. A cry went up. His trail had been spotted.

He headed back toward her last known position, peering up into the trees overhead for some glimpse of her. It was hard watching his footing, keeping an eye out for more of Proctor’s thugs and trying to spot his tree-climbing partner, all while leaving no tracks and making no sound. Oh, yeah. She was a dead woman when they got back to the house.

He’d paused, frustrated at his failure to make contact with her and unsure of where to head next when, without warning, something hit him sharply on the top of his head. He ducked, and only long years of field experience kept him from crying out in surprise and pain.

Something hit him again, this time bouncing off his shoulder and falling to the ground. He looked down. A small pine cone. He looked up just in time to see another missile flying down toward him. He dodged it, but not before he saw Sam grinning in the tree above him.
Dead
.
Woman
.

She scrambled down out of the tree quickly and jumped to the ground beside him. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?” she breathed casually, as if they’d bumped into each other on some random street corner.

“You,” he bit out. “C’mon.” Looking around, he headed away from the Proctor compound at an oblique angle he prayed would keep them clear of the search party.

They’d almost made it to where he judged the road he’d been on to come out, almost gotten away unscathed, when a shot rang out behind them. He dropped to the ground instinctively and took quick inventory. High-powered rifle. Fired at several hundred yards, even accounting for the muting effect of the heavy trees and brush around them. All his limbs worked. He wasn’t hit.

“Stay low,” he ordered under his breath. “Move out.”

Sam grunted behind him, which he took for assent. They’d been spotted, hence speed was a hell of a lot more important than stealth at this point. Crouching, he headed for the road crashing through the underbrush heedlessly. They burst into the clear all of a sudden. The road. He turned right to make a run for the Bronco, but Sam grabbed his left arm, stopping him.

“What?” he snapped quietly.

“Ladybug’s this way. And close.” She gestured to the left with her chin.

“So’s Proctor.”

“I hate to argue, Gray, but I have a little problem.”

Frowning, he looked at her fully for the first time. She was standing funny. Slightly bent to the left. “What’s up?”

“I’m hit. I got shot.”

The words were like a bucket of ice water dumped on his head, stealing his breath away. He looked down at where her left hand was pressed against her side. Blood soaked her shirt and her fingers were bloody. A little voice in the back of his head started screaming.
Nononononononononono
—

Stop
. He ordered the voice away, and it worked. At least for the moment. He had to keep functioning. Keep moving. Take care of Sam. The voice started to swear, started to remind him of another woman covered in blood—

Shut. Up!

“How far is your car?” he asked quickly.

“Maybe a hundred yards.”

“Need me to carry you?”

“Not yet,” she answered. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not and his panic ratcheted up another notch.

“Give me your backpack. And you set the pace.” He refrained from telling her that Proctor’s men had to be close by now, given how close that shot had been and how long they’d been standing here.

She took off at a limping run and he kept pace beside her, frantic with worry and need to do something to help her. Thankfully, Sam veered off the road in under a minute, and he spotted a flash of red where she pointed.

“I’ll drive,” he bit out. She fumbled for the car keys in her pocket and held them out. But when he reached for them, she refused to let go. Instead, she frowned at the Ladybug behind him.

“What now?” he asked.

“Something’s wrong,” she mumbled.

She didn’t sound good. And she looked like hell. She was noticeably more pale than usual and the bend to the left was more pronounced. He listened for pursuit and was worried that he heard nothing. Proctor’s men surely had to be all but on top of them by now.

“Give me the keys, Sam.”

“Something’s wrong,” she repeated. The words were slurred enough to worry him even more.

“What, exactly?” he asked with thin patience.

“Someone’s been here.” A pause. “I see tracks. By the doors.”

“That’s probably how Proctor’s men figured out you were watching them. They spotted the Ladybug.”

“But I hid it.” She squinted as if she was having trouble seeing him. Just how badly was she hit? How much blood was she losing? She mumbled, “Even I couldn’t see it.”

“Obviously, someone was out on a patrol in the woods and spotted your car that way.”

She shook her head as if it was getting fuzzy and she couldn’t clear it.

“We don’t have time to stand here arguing,” he declared. “Get in the car.” He opened the passenger door and all but shoved her inside. He raced around to the other side and jumped into the cramped vehicle. He reached for the ignition, and a bloody hand gripped his wrist with shocking strength. He jolted, startled.

“I see fingerprints,” she gasped. “Steering column.”

“So? You’ve put your hands on it and left some marks.”

“Not. Mine.”

They didn’t have time for this. But she gripped his wrist stubbornly and seemed determined to make him have a look at the damned fingerprints. He was too tall to bend over and see anything, so he opened the door, jumped out, dropped to his knees and looked under—

Holy mother of God.

“Sam, I need you to get out of the car. Head for the road. As fast as you can go.”

“Why?”

“There’s a bomb under here.” No wonder Proctor’s men weren’t approaching them. They knew he and Sam were going to be blown to Kingdom come the second they started the vehicle. Intruder problem solved.

And the two of them would have been killed, too, had she not had such incredible eyesight. Which gave him an idea. It would be dangerous, but worth the risk. He took a look inside Sam’s rucksack and was amused to see she had stuffed in at least as much handy gear as he would have. He fished out the length of nylon rope he spotted. It wasn’t perfect, but it would work. He tied the end of the rope to the car key then looped the rope around the steering column and through the steering wheel. Then, extremely carefully, he slipped the key into the ignition. He played out the rope, backing the full twenty-five feet of its length away from the Ladybug. He crouched behind a tree and very carefully pulled at the rope. It went taut. One more tug—

Boom!

Concussion and heat slammed into him. He took off running in roughly the direction Sam had retreated. He found her a few feet from the road, sitting down and leaning against a tree. Her eyes were closed.

“Are you still with me?” he asked her quietly.

She nodded slightly without opening her eyes.

“Can you stand up if I help you?”

Another nod, but smaller. He reached down for her and she let out a soft cry of pain as he lifted her under her armpits and put her on her feet. “I’m going to pick you up now, baby.”

He swept his arm behind her legs and lifted her in his arms. She was heavy, but he didn’t care. She was hurt, and he’d do whatever it took to get her to safety. No doubt Proctor’s men would move in to check out the Ladybug and make sure he and Sam had died in the explosion. But the car should burn hot enough for the next ten or fifteen minutes that the men wouldn’t be able to get near enough to realize the two of them hadn’t been inside the car.

He crossed the road quickly and moved off through the woods parallel to the narrow track. Sam passed out almost immediately and scared the hell out of him. When he judged he was far enough from the Ladybug that Proctor’s men wouldn’t see them, he stepped out onto the road and broke into a clumsy jog.

He laid her out flat in the back of Bronco and used his pocket knife to cut away her shirt from the wound. There was a small entrance wound in the fleshy part of her side and no exit wound. The bullet was still in there, then. The good news was the bleeding wasn’t extensive. He ripped open his first-aid kit and slathered her side with antibiotic cream. Slapping several large gauze pads over the wound, he quickly taped them in place.

“Hang on, baby,” he murmured as he tucked her legs inside the vehicle and closed the door. “I won’t let you die.”

He bent down to peek under the steering column and was relieved to see it free of any extraneous wires. He jumped in and drove like a bat out of hell.

The nearest major hospital was in Charleston, a full hour away. Pocahontas County Memorial Hospital in Buckeye was closer, but still a ways away. He pointed the Bronco toward Shady Grove instead. Where there were marines, there were field medics. And where there were field medics, there was fast, competent care for a gunshot wound.

He screeched up to the guard shack, relieved to recognize the guard on duty. “My partner’s shot,” Gray bit out. “Where’s your best medic?”

The guard pointed at a building Gray hadn’t been inside before. It was smaller than the main office and off to one side. “I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

Gray accelerated toward the facility and was relieved to see a kid come outside carrying a bulky field medic’s kit. Gray parked in front of the marine and raced around to the back of the Bronco. He wasted no time with niceties. “She’s in here. Unconscious. Entry wound. No exit wound. Not much bleeding.”

The medic efficiently removed the dressing and, after a brief examination of Sam’s side, looked up at Gray. “I can pull the bullet here, or I can stabilize her and you can take her to a real hospital.”

“Is this life threatening?” he bit out, tense.

“Nah. Bullet’s lodged in the muscle of her hip. She was lucky.”