Mountain Investigation (10 page)

“That’s not a guarantee,” he muttered.

“There aren’t any guarantees here,” she agreed. “You may not be able to keep me safe. I may not be able to
figure out what Lee wants from me. But I think it’s worth a try.” Seeing that Gray was giving the idea serious consideration, she pressed, “What have you got to lose?”

That earned her a sharp look, but then his expression blanked. After a moment, he nodded. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. I’ll get Fax to help me clear it with Johnson, and collect the manpower and equipment we’ll need to secure the cabin beyond your Mickey Mouse system.”

Within twenty minutes, Gray got his superior’s okay and preparations were underway.

Later that evening, almost seventy-two hours to the minute after Gray had driven Mariah down off the ridgeline, he drove her back up again.

The air in the truck was tense, and there was little conversation as the vehicle bumped up the access trail, followed by a chase car containing additional FBI agents and supplies. The knowledge that she and Gray weren’t going to be alone up at the cabin should’ve been a relief to Mariah. Instead, she found herself wishing the other agents were gone, wishing Gray were gone, wishing she were alone and everything was back to normal. Which was impossible.

As the night-darkened woods passed on either side of the truck, she tried vainly to remember what Lee had said. What did the bombers want from her? They’d already taken so much from her. Why wasn’t that enough?

Think,
she told herself.
Focus!
But the memory eluded her, staying stubbornly out of reach.

She told herself that her failure to remember was the source of the leaden lump at the pit of her stomach. But as Gray turned his truck into the parking area beside her
cabin and pulled up beside her Jeep, she couldn’t help thinking that the sick feeling was more than her inability to recall what Lee had said.

“You ready?” Gray said, killing the engine and pocketing his keys.

She was tempted to tell him no, that she wasn’t ready, that they should return to the city and try something else—questioning, more hypnosis, whatever it took. But they’d already tried those things and they hadn’t worked. So rather than calling off the plan, as her instincts were clamoring for her to do, she nodded. “Ready.”

At his signal she dropped down from the truck, then paused when the front door swung open and Fairfax stepped out onto the porch. The dark-haired agent looked past her and nodded to Gray. “All clear.”

Gray urged her forward. “Let’s get you inside.”

She wanted to balk. Instead, she forced herself up the stairs and through the door into her cabin, her certainty growing with every step.

This had been a very bad idea.

The moment he stepped through the front door he’d seen Lee step through only four days earlier, Gray found that Mariah’s cabin might have been “all clear,” but it still bore evidence of the recent siege.

The main room was a wide sweep running the length of the front of the cabin, with a sitting area to the right and a small kitchen to the left, separated by an island that doubled as both counter space and a dining table. The wall opposite the front door was broken up by two doors and a short hallway. From Mariah’s description of her escape, he knew her bedroom was to the right, her spare room and bath to the left. The walls were polyurethaned logs intended to look far more rustic than they actually were, and the faux log-cabin theme was carried through in exposed beams and wide pine on the floor. The décor, such as it was, leaned toward the practical and comfortable. The main room had clubfooted chairs and a cushionless sofa, upholstered in forest green, along with two rustic end tables, and several plain, functional lamps that lit the front rooms
with stark yellow light. In the kitchen, the shelves stood empty. The floor was bare, the windows uncurtained, though the advance team had covered them with plain, functional blinds that would shield the cabin’s occupants from view. On the counter rested several grocery bags, also courtesy of the advance team.

There were no personal touches, no hints of femininity, but Gray knew from the reports—and his own instincts—that those touches had been there before Lee’s arrival. More, he knew in his gut that Mariah would’ve made her space a home, a nest.

He’d seen the way she’d maintained order even in her hospital room. She had kept the items on her bedside table and in the bathroom each in the place she’d assigned them. She was neat and organized, not in the way of someone who was obsessed with it, but more like someone who’d had so many upheavals in her life that she’d learned to control what pieces of it she could.

He imagined that she’d taken care with her small living space. He could only assume that seeing her home stripped bare, as it was now, would hurt her.

He was tempted to block her from entering, to take her back down to the city and watch over her there—or, even better, lock her into a safe house until Mawadi and the others had been dealt with.

But that was the irrational part of him talking, the part that had gotten so caught up in guilting himself over their kiss that he hadn’t been at his post when the turncoat cop had abducted her from the hospital. And although that situation had worked out, thanks to a GPS
and some major strokes of luck, it only confirmed what his rational, trained side had been telling him since that first moment he’d kissed her and nearly lost himself. Or hell, since the moment he’d plastered himself atop her out in the woods beyond the cabin, shielding her from discovery, and had been all but derailed by the feel of her body beneath his.

She was trouble, and the two of them together were a bad mix.

There was chemistry, yes—a whole lot of chemistry, though she was nothing like the soft, feminine women he was typically drawn to. And he was even tempted to like her from time to time, when he didn’t want to strangle her for being stubborn and insisting on challenging him at every turn. But none of that was pertinent to the case at hand, was it? He had to think like a special agent on this one. She was an asset, nothing more. The next time he forgot that and let her distract him, she could very well end up dead. And if she died without remembering what Lee wanted from her, then the next terror attack, and the hundreds—maybe even thousands—of lives lost, would be on his head.

So instead of sparing her the sight of what her ex had done to her home, he stepped aside and beckoned her inside. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

She moved through the front door and stopped short. Her eyes went blank for a second, then flooded with emotion. “Oh. It’s so…empty.” She looked around, her breath catching. “Where are all my pictures? The rugs are gone, the pillows, everything.” She turned to him. “Did the CSIs really need to take everything?”

“They didn’t.” His voice came out flat as he forced himself to keep the necessary distance. “I had a cleaning crew come in and clear out everything that Lee and Brisbane wrecked while they were staying here. The damaged stuff is bagged and tagged outside.” According to the reports, that accounted for just about everything in the cabin except the furniture. “You can go through it later, but the cleaners said almost all of it was beyond salvage.”

The men—or, most likely, in Gray’s opinion, Lee—had used the sofa cushions for target practice, smashed the photographs, urinated on the rugs, torn through her clothing and photographic equipment, and wrecked almost everything else that could be wrecked. The couch and chairs had taken some hits, too, but the cleaners had been able to remove the worst of the stains. It would be up to Mariah whether she wanted to keep those pieces.

Not that she needed to know those details right now. The violation she was feeling showed in her eyes, and in the stiff tension in her body. She was wearing jeans and a pale amber sweater that earlier in the day had picked up the color in her eyes and the highlights in her dark, curly hair. Now, though, the color only served to emphasize the deathly pallor of her face, giving her an air of fragile vulnerability, and he was used to her being neither fragile nor vulnerable.

For a second she looked small and delicate, which kicked at every protective urge Gray had ever possessed, threatening to override his better judgment. He’d actually taken two steps toward her before she turned and pinned him with a look.

“No.” The word was soft, but underlaid with steel. Tears glistened in her eyes, but her voice held only determination when she said, “You don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to touch me when you feel like it, then turn around and tell me it’s all about the case. You don’t want to be attracted to me, don’t want to be with me. I get that. Well, guess what? Given a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t pick you, either. Which should make this much easier than it would’ve been otherwise.” She looked past him to the open door. “Are the others coming in?”

He reached back without looking and swung the door shut. “Nope. They’ll form a perimeter outside.” It wasn’t SOP, but it was what Gray had insisted on. Not because he wanted to spend time alone with her in the small cabin, but because he’d thought it would be easier for her that way, without five other agents lurking in the cabin.

She looked at him for a long moment, then surprised him by nodding. “Thanks. Good call. The more space I’ve got to myself, the more likely I’ll be able to remember what Lee said.”

That was pretty much what Gray had been thinking, which made him wish he didn’t understand her as well as he was coming to. In his business, detachment was key.

Needing some crucial distance, he pulled out his cell and checked the time. “It’s nearly midnight. We should move some furniture, get some sleep.” He prowled across the main room to check out the two back bedrooms. They were both equally small, but one was crammed full of furniture, while the other held only a bare mattress on a bed frame that was pushed up against
the wall, right below a shiny new eyebolt that’d been screwed deep into one of the polyurethaned logs.

Gray went rigid with raw fury as he pictured Mariah lying there, bound, terrified and chained to the wall, terrorized by the man she’d thought she loved.

This time, he gave in to the urge to block the doorway. He turned and found Mariah close behind him. Scowling, he said, “You’ll sleep in the main room or the other bedroom.”

He halfway expected an argument, halfway expected relief. He hadn’t expected her eyes to soften just a hint, or her lips to turn up at the corners in a sad smile.

“I appreciate the thought. Seriously. But we both know the best way for me to remember is to put myself in the same situation I was in when I heard Lee the first time.” She nudged him aside, and Gray gave way because she was right, dammit.

She moved to the center of the room, then stopped and stood, staring at the bed. The overhead bulb illuminated the scene in stark yellow light that did nothing to blunt the impact of a bedroom that had been turned into a cell.

When she turned and looked at him, Gray saw the memories in her eyes, and the despair. “Mariah,” he began, but then stopped, because what could he say? She was right about a number of things, not the least of them that she needed to stay in that bed, and he needed to keep his hands off her if he didn’t intend to follow through on what was—or could be—between them.

She nodded as if he’d said those things aloud. “Yeah. I know.” Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Did he leave me any sheets and pillows?”

“I had an agent pick up supplies, bedding included. The advance team left the bags in the spare room.”

“In other words, no, he didn’t leave me anything except the walls and some furniture.” She nodded as if she’d expected the answer, though her expression was bleak and her voice very soft and sad when she said, “Lee has a mean streak. Heck, that’s practically all he is—one big mean streak. I didn’t see it until after we were married. That’s going to haunt me, I expect, until the day I die. If I had seen it, if I had done something—”

“Don’t,” Gray interrupted. He moved in closer to her, not to soothe, but so she would know that he meant every word. “First off, there was no way you could’ve known; he was playing a role, and he’s smart and ruthless enough to pull it off.” Gray knew that for a fact, having watched the bastard nearly charm a jury into acquitting him. “Second, if your gut had warned you off him in the beginning, he would’ve just moved on to someone else, used someone else. That would’ve changed your life, yes, but it wouldn’t have stopped the bombing. Al-Jihad doesn’t open himself to risk by having just one plan—he has backups upon backups. You were one piece of a larger whole. And third, if you’d figured it out and turned Lee in, there’s no telling what would have happened. Maybe the authorities would’ve traced him back to al-Jihad before the bombing. Probably not, though. And you know what one thing you can be sure of? If you’d turned him in, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

He hadn’t meant to put it so bluntly, but there it was. She’d survived her marriage only because she’d with
drawn into herself and presented such a minimal threat to Mawadi’s plans that it hadn’t been necessary to kill her beforehand. And then she’d gotten very, very lucky. On the day of the bombing, Lee had arranged to meet her at one of the Santa’s thrones. She’d been delayed by traffic just long enough so that she arrived at the mall late. She’d been in the parking lot when the bombs went off.

“You’re right.” She nodded, pale but determined. “And I’m going to make him sorry he ever pulled me into this. I’d like to say he’s going to be sorry for what he’s done, but I don’t think he’s capable of that.” Features set, she headed out of the room. “I’m going to make the bed, at least. I may have to sleep in here, but I don’t have to do it on a bare mattress.” She turned back in the doorway. “You want the foldout in the spare room or the couch in the living room? If you want the foldout, we’ll have to shift some furniture around in the office. They certainly jammed stuff in there.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but he could see the effort it took her to maintain that practical, no-nonsense front. He sensed that she needed to crumble, but she’d be damned if she’d do it in front of him.

He wanted to soothe, but he didn’t have the right. So he dipped his chin, acknowledging all of it, and said, “I’ll bunk down on the couch.”

Not that he’d be sleeping much. He could go days without sleep on assignment and intended to do exactly that on this job. It wasn’t that he distrusted the perimeter the other agents had set up, per se. It was more that he’d stayed alive up to that point by virtue of not
trusting anyone but himself. According to Stacy, that was one of the things that had torpedoed their marriage, which by extension meant it had begun the domino effect that had put him and the others in Colorado for the bombings. But so what? His lack of trust might have indirectly put him in the current situation, but it was going to damn well get him out of it intact, and he was bringing Mariah out safely with him.

Although she’d seemed to read his thoughts from his expressions a few times before, this time she took his words at face value, simply nodding and turning away. “I’ll go see what your agents left us.”

Gray didn’t follow her out. He crossed the room, shoved her bed out of the way and went to work on the eyebolt. Cursing Mawadi to hell and back, he used the spare clip from his 9 mm as leverage to unscrew the hardware from its bite in the heavy log wall. The bolt resisted at first; it’d been driven deep with what he imagined had been Mawadi’s desire for revenge against the woman who’d dared to divorce him.

But Gray was fueled by an equal measure of anger, and hatred for men like Mawadi, who killed because it entertained them, or like al-Jihad, who killed because their own warped, twisted sense of right and wrong demanded it. And, as the bolt finally came free of the wood and clattered to the floor beneath the bed, Gray knew he was currently being compelled by another, equally hot emotion.

He needed to know that Mariah wouldn’t be staring at that damn eyebolt as she tried to remember what her ex had said to her.

Stirred up, ticked off and feeling as though he were about to explode, Gray swept up the bolt from under the bed and stalked through the crowded spare room to the back exit, through which Mariah had escaped four days ago—four days that seemed like so much longer. He was aware of her watching him, wide-eyed, as he yanked open the door, waved for the perimeter guards to stand down, and hurled the eyebolt outside.