Incriminating Evidence (35 page)

“I’m counting on that.”

He kissed her one more time, then took the lead in the trek toward the stream.

She was a dangerous distraction, but he’d never be this close to getting answers without her help, so he’d have to find a way to bury his libido as long as they were in this section of woods. It wasn’t safe.

They found the tributary and headed upstream as planned. Following his orders, Isabel trailed right behind him. They reached a flat basalt face that had been scoured by a glacier thousands of years ago. “Alec, that’s a petroglyph on the rock face.”

He studied the etched lines. “Not a lynx.”

“No. A hawk. I think. Ironic that it’s a raptor.” She paused. “It could be a prehistoric marker. A helpful note that a rock-shelter, cave, or storage pit is nearby.”

“Like a road sign?”

“Sure you can call it that. Exit twenty-two, prehistorically speaking.”

He smiled. They could use a sign right now.

He paced the edge of the face. Flat. Cold. No breaks, nothing to indicate a cave was nearby. He reached the edge of the sheer face, where it jutted out from a rock-sprinkled slope and rounded the bend. The face didn’t project from the slope in a solid, attached wall of rock; it was a massive boulder that had been pushed from the top of the foothill by a glacier thousands of years ago. What appeared to be a face was really a flat, hundred-foot-wide boulder that rested against a rocky hillside. A deep crevasse separated boulder from hill.

Isabel gasped. “The boulder is a capstone.” Astonishment filled her voice. “No wonder I missed it before. This was probably a simple rock-shelter—just a deep overhang—until the boulder landed in front of it.”

She turned and gazed downslope. “We came a different route up the stream today, but on Thursday, I’m pretty sure I walked through that stand of trees.” She pointed to the stand. “And I went up that ridge. Then I looked at my watch and realized I needed to get back to my survey area.”

“That’s when I heard you and came out of the trance.”

She took a step toward the opening.

He caught her arm to stop her. “I enter first. I’ll call out if it’s safe for you.” He could see she wanted to argue, to insist on blindly entering—as she’d have done if he hadn’t been with her. “We don’t know what’s in there. Do the smart thing, Iz. We’ve come this far.”

She frowned but nodded.

He took her face between his hands and kissed her. He released her and pulled his gun. Isabel pressed a canister of bear spray into his other hand. He nodded in thanks and stepped into the crevasse between boulder and hillside.

The opening was low and narrow, a tight squeeze for Alec’s shoulders. An adult bear would have difficulty squeezing through, giving him hope none would have taken up residence inside. He shuffled forward in a slow, careful gait, aware that if there was a human predator inside the cave, they could zap him with a torrent of infrasound while the slim crevasse constricted him.

Finally, he made it through, facing no infrasound attack. The space to his right widened while to his left was the flat, glacially carved boulder. The cave was the shape of an open pita pocket—no walls, just floor and ceiling coming together in a sideways vee.

He ran his flashlight beam over the jagged ceiling and floor. The space was empty except for a few sleeping bats hanging from the ceiling. It smelled awful, bat guano and something else—likely the remains of a carnivore’s dinner—but it looked like no human had ever been here.

“Alec?” Isabel’s shout was muffled by the thick rock wall.

He tucked away his gun as disappointment filtered through him. He’d felt certain this was the place, yet it didn’t look familiar. But then, there had been lights. The dream had been like an overexposed photograph, which was why he suspected his eyes had been dilated. “Come in, Iz.”

A moment later, she was by his side. She explored the ceiling and floor with her own light, then stepped deeper into the cave, ducking to avoid low rock protrusions. Finally she stopped and let out a relieved sigh. “There.”

Alec moved to her side, so he could see where her flashlight beam had landed. She’d found a smooth stretch of rock on the ceiling etched with a grinning catlike face.

I
sabel felt a strange jubilation. Strange, because this room had been a torture chamber. Jubilation, because she’d found it at last.

The lynx petroglyph proved Vin’s dream was real. He’d been out hiking—probably not far from here—and he’d been shot with infrasound and dragged to this cave, and they’d tested their weapons on him.

She’d excavated in a rock-shelter like this in Eastern Washington about five years ago. It had been used for storage pits thousands of years before, and there’d been very little dirt. Excavation was mostly removing cobbles from the unit one at a time. Every time she removed a rock, she’d watch the dirt slip between the cobbles below, sinking ever farther down. Taking soil samples had been nearly impossible.

If a forensic team came out to look for evidence that Vin and Alec were tortured here, they’d have a hell of a time trying to collect it.

She ran her flashlight over the ceiling, pausing on the bats, then shifted the beam to the floor, seeking some hint as to who had hurt her brother and her…she didn’t really know what to call Alec.

Had Godfrey been here? He may have lied about where he’d found Vin. He’d resigned from Raptor on Thursday, leaving him unaccounted for when someone shot her cabin with infrasound and Airwave on Friday.

She took a step toward the back to see beyond the two-foot-high boulders that littered the floor. The strong stench of rotting meat intensified. She gagged and peered over a boulder to see what critter had played a fatal role in the food chain, and stumbled backward in shock.

Something—
wolf, lynx, coyote?
—had feasted here. Actually, probably several somethings, given that there was very little left. The shocking part was the prey wore clothing.

And not just any clothing. Raptor forest camouflage.

“Alec!” His name was all she could choke out. She covered her nose and mouth, desperately trying not to heave.

He stepped beside her and froze.

She managed to get her stomach under control and breathed through her mouth to avoid the smell. “Do you think it was an employee they were testing infrasound on?” The thought made her belly roll again. Another victim, like Vin. Like Alec.

Alec said nothing. He could have been made of marble as he stood staring at the mutilated remains.

“Alec?”

He met her gaze, but his eyes were blank. “No. Not a victim.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It was me.”

“What do you mean?” Fear spiked. He wasn’t making sense.

“I mean I did it. I remember it all now. Right before I was hit in the head and knocked unconscious, I snapped this guy’s neck.
I
killed him.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A
lec stared at the body. Adrenaline flooded his system. He’d killed this man. The memory punched him in the gut with enough force to make him wonder if he’d cough up blood.

He’d killed a man during the lost hours, and the memory had been suppressed, not by his own brain, but by the bastards who’d taken him. The hole in his memory was a violation. He felt no remorse over the killing. No, his outrage was over the memory gap, that something so important could be altered in his mind.

This kill had been self-defense. As a soldier, he’d killed. He didn’t regret those deaths. All Tangos had been valid targets. Threats to be neutralized.

He’d compartmentalized and moved on. But this… this was an entirely different kind of compartmentalization. His memory of this had been buried. Someone had seriously fucked with his mind.

I didn’t remember killing a human being.

His brain was his greatest asset. He might not be as smart as genius Curt, and he didn’t doubt Lee had a few IQ points on him, but he was no dummy and had a degree from Harvard to prove it. The idea that someone had screwed around in his brain enraged him.

Fight or flight surged through him—except flight had been trained out of him, so he was all fight with no one to rip apart.

He sucked in a deep breath. Flexed his fingers. Punching the rock ceiling wouldn’t do anything but break his hand and scare the shit out of Isabel.

Time to find out who this person was and get the hell out of this cave of forgotten nightmares.

In control again, he grabbed a bandanna from his backpack and crouched by the remains. There wasn’t much left. The face had been chewed on to the point of being unrecognizable and the few scraps of clothing had been shredded and matted with blood. Using the bandanna, he lifted the torn sleeve, exposing flesh and bone.

Behind him, he heard Isabel gag. “Look away, Iz. Anything we find won’t be pretty.”

“I can take it. Or I’ll puke. One or the other.”

The putrid stench of rotting flesh hit him in a wave. “I might puke with you.” Slowly, carefully, he lifted another section of cloth, revealing the man’s wrist and gloved hand. If this crime scene weren’t so damn remote—odds were more of the man’s body would be eaten before a forensic team could get out here—and if he didn’t know
exactly
who’d killed the guy—he’d never touch the remains. But right now he needed answers that couldn’t wait for FBI crime scene techs.

He stared at the small patch of skin on the wrist. The edge of a tattoo was visible. He looked up at Isabel. “Do you recognize this ink?”

“There’s not enough to be sure. A few operatives have full-sleeve tats, but only one hasn’t been around the last few days.”

Her words confirmed his thoughts. “Ted Godfrey.”

I
sabel backed away from the remains as the full import sank in. Her heel caught on a rock, and she stumbled, falling on her ass on the rocky floor. A stone gouged her butt, but the pain didn’t register as her mind reeled from an entirely different source of agony.

Nicole, last night at dinner, her voice firm without a trace of hesitation:
“I begged Godfrey to stay. Quitting without notice when the CEO was about to arrive was shitty as hell.”

But Godfrey hadn’t quit, not if he was here—and dead—which meant Nicole couldn’t beg him to stay.

“Nicole is one of them.” Isabel had always known it was possible, but she’d never wanted to believe it.

Unfortunately, it fit. Nicole could easily have given quotes to the
Sun
, her outrage this morning merely an act to deflect suspicion. She cleared her throat. “You need to ask Nicole to produce a letter of resignation. Proof Godfrey quit.”

Alec nodded. “She won’t have it. She’s part of this. She’s probably the leader of this whole operation.”

“But why? Why would she do this?”

“I don’t know, Iz. But we’ll find out.” He pulled out his cell phone and began snapping pictures of the remains. “We need to head to town and talk to the FBI.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

Alec nodded toward the remains. “That we think it’s Ted Godfrey, and I killed him while he was torturing me.”

“There will be questions. Doubts. It will destroy any chance you have of getting elected.” This would ruin him in a way that wasn’t fair. Not that she expected life to be fair—she knew better than anyone that there was no such thing as fair in this world. But still, for Alec to lose everything because he’d been abducted was wrong.