Mountain Investigation (14 page)

He couldn’t say he was a fan, either, though not for any particular reason he could specify. It was more of a vague disquiet, a sense that they shouldn’t make the trip down to the city. But that didn’t make any sense, either. He’d never been a cabin-in-the-woods kind of guy. The faint urge to stay another few days, or come back up after all this was over…Those were just situational urges. They’d disappear eventually.

Steeling himself, he joined Mariah in her bedroom, which was already looking more like a room than a jail cell. She’d gotten one of the junior agents to help her move a dresser in from the office, along with an end table and a small desk, and then accessorized with a couple of lamps and the few small pieces of bric-a-brac that had escaped her ex’s taste for destruction. The bedclothes were new and she didn’t have a rug or curtains, but the room already looked better. More important, at least to him, Mariah looked better. She seemed more settled. Steadier.

He hated having to take that away, to take her away. If it were up to him, he would’ve stayed the night,
and…well, it didn’t matter now, did it? “I’m sorry, Mariah,” he said gruffly. “We’ve got to get back down to the city.”

She surprised him by nodding. “I figured as much. Your boss will want me to ID the statuette, and probably add me to the protective custody my folks are under. Makes sense to guard us all in one place, right?”

He knew he shouldn’t touch her. He did it anyway, a glancing caress on her cheek that brought her head up, brought her eyes to his.

“You’re okay with this?” he asked, which was a stupid question, but still. He needed more from her than he was getting. He needed…Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted, just that she’d awakened feelings in him that he’d never expected to feel again. She made him want, made him dream. Made him desire, though she was nothing like what he’d thought he wanted.

She met his eyes and laid her hand atop his, capturing his fingers against her cheek. Warmth kindled low in his belly, beside the twist in his gut that wouldn’t go away. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “One of these days, I’ll be just fine. And so will you.”

“Mariah,” he began, but she touched a fingertip to his lips, effectively silencing him.

“Not now,” she said softly.

He was grateful she’d stopped him, because he didn’t have a damn clue what he’d been about to say. So he went with a lame, “Do you want to pack anything for the trip back down?”

She shook her head. “The terrorists ruined the few things I really cared about.”

“Join the club,” he said, meaning it to come out light, and wincing when the effort fell flat.

They just stood there for a long moment, staring at one another, and the air hummed with the hard, edgy warmth that always surged through him when they were together, only it was sharper and hotter now, because he knew how she tasted and what she sounded like when she moaned into his mouth. He’d begun to know how her body felt against his, and burned to know more.

He wanted to kiss her, wanted to back her up until she sank down on that wide bed of hers. He wanted to touch every inch of her, worship her, take her. And in doing so, he wanted to give her new memories of the room, of her cabin. He wanted to superimpose his own stamp over the ruin her ex had made of her life. He didn’t, though, because he knew, even in the throes of lust, that while he’d be a hell of a lot better for her than her ex had been, he still wasn’t what she needed.

She deserved someone who would put her first the way nobody else had done before. She should be the center of someone’s universe, the lodestone around which the family revolved. And he knew, deep down inside, that even if Lee, al-Jihad and the others were back behind bars—or dead—and the entire terror network dismantled, he couldn’t be that man for her. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he simply wasn’t capable of it.

Stacy had called him cold and detached, and he was. At first she’d accused him of putting his work ahead of his family. Later, when she’d really stepped back and taken a long, hard look at his relationship with his
parents, she’d changed that to encompass putting his work ahead of her, and she’d been right. He’d been so determined to find a perfect match, as his parents had—finding a woman from a cop family, one who would get what it meant to be married to a cop—that he hadn’t stopped to really think about why his parents’ marriage had worked. It wasn’t because of the job or how his mother handled things. It was because his parents loved each other. Somehow Gray had lost track of that feeling, of how to find and keep it. He’d thought he loved Stacy, but really she’d simply been a good fit, or what he’d thought was a good fit. And he’d thought he’d loved Ken and Trish, and especially baby Catherine. But if that were the case, why hadn’t he managed to catch and put away their killers by now?

Instead, here he was, on the verge of losing his job and obsessed with a woman who was more wrong for him than Stacy had ever been.

But knowing it, knowing how wrong he and Mariah were on paper, even though for some reason they seemed to click in person, he let his hand drop and stepped away. “Then if you’re ready, we should get going.”

She looked at him long and hard before she nodded. “I’m ready.”

She headed for the door without hesitating, without looking back, and Gray got the distinct impression that they’d just agreed to far more than driving back down to the city. He was pretty sure they’d just agreed that it—whatever
it
had been starting to happen between them—was over.

Logic said he should be relieved.

Logic could go to hell.

“Mariah, wait,” he said, taking two long strides to catch up to her. “Wait. I think we need to—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his thought, because at that moment the sound of gunfire erupted from the front of the cabin, there was a
whump
of detonation, and the world exploded around him.

Mariah screamed as the flames engulfed the front room of the cabin. This wasn’t happening, she told herself. This couldn’t be happening. Only it could and it was.

“This way.” Gray grabbed her arm with one hand, his weapon appearing in the other, held with deadly intent. “Out the back.”

She started to follow him, then dug in her heels when she heard the crack of gunfire from out front, followed by a cry of pain. “Shouldn’t we—”

“No,” he said flatly. “We shouldn’t. Right now, you’re more important than they are.” It was the soldier talking now, not the man, but she could tell that it cost him.

Another explosion detonated outside, and when she glanced through a window, she saw the two FBI vehicles in flames.

This time when Gray yanked at her, urging her out the back, she followed without protest, scrambling, stumbling, clinging to him because he was the one sure, solid thing she knew she could hang on to in the midst of chaos.

He stopped at the back door, took a look around the partially cleared office, grabbed a couple of lamps and set them near the door. Then he moved to a ruined coffee table, with two of four legs broken—Lee’s handiwork. Made of hardwood, the tabletop was crisscrossed with rusted iron strapping and impregnated with old hand-forged nails, mute testimony that the wood had been reclaimed from one of the local mills.

Using the remaining two legs as handles, Gray lifted the flat wooden slab and nodded with grim satisfaction. “It’ll do.”

Mariah didn’t have to ask for what, because she could guess—as a shield. They had to assume that Lee and the others had the rear exit covered.

Gray glanced back at her, his eyes steely with determination and rage. “Ready?”

No.
“Yes.”

“Let’s go. Keep your head down and
move!
”

He kicked open the door and hurled the lamps out. Gunfire spat from the tree line, coming from two positions, one dead ahead of them, the other slightly to the right.

Holding up their makeshift shield, Gray rushed out the door. Mariah followed and got in the lee of the slab, ducking to stay below the protected level and keeping her feet moving. Gray angled them to the left, away from where the gunfire had come, and charged for the forest.

Grabbing an edge of the table, partly to help and partly to keep herself steady as they hurdled over the stumps she’d clear-cut for her own protection, Mariah ran for her life.

Gunfire chattered and bullets slammed into the heavy wood of the table, some of them pinging as they ricocheted off the embedded metal. A new, larger explosion ripped through the air, and heat scorched her skin.

She didn’t look back, didn’t need to. Lee had left the cabin standing as bait of his own, knowing how important her home was to her. Now, if he couldn’t trap or kill her in it, he would destroy it, knowing how much the loss would hurt.

“No!” she screamed, denying the evil that she’d married.

“Are you hit?” Gray shouted, not looking back as he maneuvered them closer to the trees, shifting his grip to fire a few rounds off to their left, though she didn’t know if he’d seen someone or was laying cover fire.

“No, I’m mad. Get us out of here so we can nail these bastards!” That was all that drove her now—less fear for her own safety and more the knowledge that she had to stay alive long enough to identify the statuette and help Gray and his people figure out why Lee had wanted the thing. For the first time, she thought she understood why and how Gray had subsumed his own life and needs for so long beneath the mantle of revenge. She only hoped she lived long enough to do the same.

Gunfire erupted from their unprotected side as they hit the tree line, stitching a line of bullet strikes in the forest floor just as the continued barrage from the other side finally took its toll on the wooden slab, which all but crumbled under the onslaught.

Tossing the tabletop, Gray grabbed Mariah’s hand. “Come on!”

Together, they bolted into the woods.

Déjà vu ripped through her, and she had a crazy moment of profound gratitude that she was at least wearing shoes this time, and hadn’t spent the previous five days tied to her own bed, drugged and disoriented.

Then again, she also wasn’t trying to elude only two men. From the amount of chaos coming from the front of the cabin, where her Jeep and the other vehicles burned, smudging the air with choking smoke and the roar of fire, she knew Lee had come with a team. And, unlike Brisbane, it didn’t seem as though they had any compunction about killing her this time.

So, clinging to Gray’s hand as her only anchor in a storm of gunfire and insanity, she ran as hard and fast as she could.

Moments later came the sounds of pursuit, and a familiar voice shouting, “Get her! No, go around that way!”

At Gray’s glance, she nodded and confirmed, “Lee.”

He cursed as the sounds of pursuit intensified. “The others couldn’t hold them.”

She didn’t ask if that meant the agents were dead; she didn’t want to know just then. She could feel the guilt later. Right now, she and Gray needed to get out of there and back down to the city.

Realizing that they were running uphill, not down, she said, fitting the words between breaths as she began to labor with the effort, “Should we circle back to the cars?”

“The cars are gone,” he reminded her. “What’s up this way?”

“Trees.”

“Damn.”

Back when she’d bought the cabin, its isolation had been a blessing, its location suitable for her self-imposed penance. Now, she found herself wishing that she’d bought a condo in the city, where screaming for help might’ve gotten her somewhere.

“Let’s stop here for a second.” Gray pulled her into the lee of a big, lichen-covered boulder, then leaned back against it, breathing hard. “Quiet. I think they’ve stopped.”

They strained to regulate their breathing, listening intently. Mariah could all but picture Lee and his men doing the same thing.

There was only silence. Either Lee and the others had stopped as well, they’d retreated…or they were creeping up on the boulder, soundlessly, aiming to surround her and Gray and gun them down where they stood. That thought brought a huge shiver crawling down Mariah’s back, and she unconsciously moved closer to the man who, thus far, had consistently chosen retreat over attack in an effort to keep her safe, despite his claims that he’d turn her over if it meant he’d get justice for his friends and the others.

She was vaguely surprised when Gray curled an arm around her and hugged her to his side. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, not looking at her, but instead scanning the forest around them.

Yes,
a small voice whispered inside her,
but who’s got you?
He stood alone so often, apart from his so-
called teammates. His boss didn’t like him; his wife had divorced him; he didn’t speak about his family; he felt responsible for the deaths of his closest friends; and his only living friend that she knew of, Jonah Fairfax, was engaged to be married to a special agent-in-training and was off on a vendetta of his own, trying to track down his former boss, agent-turned-traitor Jane Doe.

For a man Mariah had initially thought of as just another cog in the FBI machine that seemed determined to tear her life and family apart, Gray had turned out to be as much of a loner as she was, if not more so, with one main difference: she sought solitude, while he carried his with him.

When there was no sound or movement from the direction of the cabin, Gray eased his arm from around Mariah to dig into his pocket and pull out his long-range cell phone. “Hopefully, one of the other agents got off a mayday and reinforcements are already on their way up.” He punched a speed-dial button, then held the phone to his ear. “Won’t hurt to follow up, though. Johnson should be able to get a chopper up here.”

There were too many
hopefullys
and
ifs
in that statement, Mariah knew. Her fear was confirmed when Gray cursed, stabbed a couple more buttons on the phone, then flipped it shut and shoved it back into his pocket.

“What’s wrong?”

“Signal’s jammed.”

He didn’t give her time to process that, or what it might mean. Instead, he pushed away from the boulder and held out a hand. “Come on, we need to—” He
broke off when a new sound encroached on the silence: the low thump of helicopter rotors.

“Yours?” Mariah asked hopefully. Was their rescue at hand so quickly?

“Maybe.” But he didn’t sound optimistic. He glanced at her, and there was worry in his gray eyes. “The timing doesn’t quite mesh, unless Johnson had the bird on its way up the ridge already, which he wouldn’t have had any reason to do.”

A chill settled into her bones. “Then it’s al-Jihad’s.”

“Could be.” He took her hand and tugged her along. “Could just be sightseers or flight lessons.”

“All the way out here?”

“Yeah. Not likely. And if they’re coming after us, we have to assume they’re prepared for a forest search this time—infrared, night vision, the works.” He took a long look around at their surroundings. “It’ll be dark soon, and there’s no way we can chance looping back around to the cabin. Better to hole up for the night and try to get to cell range in the morning.” He paused. “How far are we from that cave of yours?”

Determined not to panic, not to despair, Mariah took a good look around, followed by a glance at the setting sun, and forced her voice to sound level. “A mile, maybe more. I’m pretty sure there’s a river between here and there. It’s fordable, but we’ll get wet.”

“We’ll have to chance it,” he decided. “The water could be to our benefit if they bring in tracking dogs.”

She shivered at the thought. It seemed unbelievable that this could be happening. Less than an hour earlier
she’d been under full FBI protection. Now she and Gray were cut off and on their own. “Won’t your boss figure out that something’s wrong when you guys don’t check in on schedule?”

“Of course, but depending on what’s going on with the case, he might send a single car up to see if our communications went down, rather than sending in the cavalry right away. That’ll take time.” Gray lifted a hand and touched her cheek in a gesture that was more reassuring than sensual, though there was heat there, as well. “Can you take me back to your cave?”

She hesitated as something deep inside her warned that that was a bad idea, that too much had changed too quickly between them, but what other choice did she have? His logic was irrefutable; they needed someplace safe to hide for the night. She didn’t know anyplace better than the cave system leading to the secret waterfall. Dammit.

Hating the thought of bringing fear and uncertainty into her small zone of peace, hating that Lee was taking that from her, too, she nodded and firmed her chin. “Follow me.”

She led the way and he fell in behind her, each of them straining to hear the sounds of pursuit. The chopper noise passed over them and faded, but Mariah knew that was no guarantee either way. Maybe the terrorists were conferring over search plans. Maybe the agents had gotten a message through and reinforcements had already arrived at the burning cabin. They just didn’t know, and couldn’t risk going back to take a look.

For now, hiding was her and Gray’s best and only option. Tomorrow, they’d find some way to fight back, or die trying.

I
T TOOK THEM NEARLY
an hour to reach the cave. The river crossing was shallow, but the water current was stronger than Gray would’ve liked, the flow tugging halfway up his thighs as they fought their way upriver, working to confuse trackers. They were most of the way to where Mariah had indicated they should climb out, when the chopper’s rotor thump returned.

Without a word, working in the strange synchrony that kept developing between them when he least expected it, they both dropped down into the water, submerging themselves almost completely.

The cold water killed their heat signatures instantly, and the helicopter passed overhead without incident. In the last of the fading light, Gray looked up at the passing bird and got a glimpse of a sleek-nosed shape with regulation FAA tail numbers but no official seal. Not FBI, then. Maybe rented, maybe private. Almost certainly al-Jihad.

When the helicopter had moved on, he and Mariah dragged themselves to the riverbank, and up and out of the water, shivering. The night air cut quickly through their wet clothing, making the chill even worse.

“We need to get moving,” he said, the words coming out shaky as his jaw chattered.

She nodded, but didn’t speak, and she didn’t protest when he took her hand and walked at her side rather than bringing up the rear guard. Helping each other,
leaning into one another for warmth, they staggered onward. By the time they crawled up the rock face leading to the hidden ledge, it was fully dark and he was all but carrying her, with his arm looped around her waist, hers around his neck. She was shivering and in shock, but she hadn’t complained, hadn’t given up.

The moon was out, which was a damn good thing, since they didn’t have even her small flashlight. When they got inside the cave, he lit the way with his cell phone—stupid thing couldn’t call out, but at least it was water-resistant enough that it was still working, and the display light was good for something.