Mountain Investigation (9 page)

She landed hard, banging her head and exhaling in a rush when the metal gurney came down with its full weight on top of her. It took her a second to realize that the jolt had popped the strap securing her arms. She was partway free!

Struggling to breathe through her gag, she tried to free herself from the confines of the body bag. She was in darkness again, having fallen face forward, but she managed to roll onto her side. Working quickly, sobbing with fear, she ripped open the bag, then yanked at the strap binding her chest. Almost clear!

Lee was shouting. She heard him curse, and heard another man’s voice join in, followed by the sound of running footsteps and the cry of, “The cop’s taking off.
Shoot him!
”

Mariah screamed behind her gag when gunfire cracked above her, three times in quick succession. She didn’t know if the cop had run in order to escape, to draw the attention of the incoming vehicle, which sounded as though it were nearly on top of them, or to buy her time to get free of her bonds, but she’d take the distraction no matter what the reason. She yanked the towel out of her mouth, tearing her parched lips in the process but not caring about the pain because it meant she could finally breathe.

Sucking in deep, wrenching breaths and sobbing in relief, she reached for her ankles, which were strapped to each other, but not attached to the backboard she’d been secured to. Before she could get to them, though,
the gurney was lifted off her and Lee rasped, “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

He shifted his gun to his other hand and reached down to grab her. Screaming, she struck back, fisting her hands together and swinging them at his face. The blow was a solid connection that reverberated up her arm and sent Lee reeling back, roaring obscenities through split and bleeding lips. Fury lit his eyes as he switched the gun to his dominant hand and leveled it at her. “You’re going to regret that,
wife.
”

The man still in the minivan lurched halfway out, snapping something that, even in a foreign language, sounded like, “We’re leaving,
now!
”

Lee’s finger tightened on the trigger. Mariah thought it was over. She was dead.

Then gunfire split the air, but it came from the tree line, not Lee’s gun. Bullets glanced off the minivan, one shattering the back window. The driver shouted, leaped back into the minivan and hit the gas. Lee dove in the open back deck, yelling, “Go, go, go!”

The vehicle peeled out, spraying Mariah with sand and debris, but she didn’t protect herself. She was staring slack-jawed in shock as Gray burst from the tree line, running flat-out after the minivan.

She screamed, “Gray, no!” but he didn’t hear her. Or if he heard her, he paid no heed.

He flung himself through the open back deck, tackling Lee and hammering a punch into her ex’s jaw as the vehicle flew down a dirt access road and disappeared.

A scant second later, four official vehicles burst from the tree line in the direction Gray had come from. Two
skidded to a stop near Mariah and the hospital van. The other two raced in pursuit of the minivan.

“Are you okay?” The cop was back, fresh grief and remorse in his eyes. “I flagged them down, but—”

“Don’t say anything more,” said a big, brown-haired man as he emerged from one of the official vehicles. He had wide-palmed hands, uncompromising features and a local PD badge. “As your friendly local Internal Affairs stiff, I’m advising you to shut the hell up now.” He cuffed the cop, who went with him, unresisting.

Mariah simply stared, uncomprehending, as too many things happened around her at once, seemingly unconnected in her brain. Time passed in a fog…yet there was no sign of Gray. The chase cars hadn’t come back, and for all the agents and cops piling out of the two big black SUVs and the cruisers pulling up behind them, not a single radio relayed news of Gray’s safe return.

“Hey.” A man squatted down in front of her and held out a hand. “Can I help you up?”

He had black hair and dark blue eyes, and he looked familiar, though Mariah didn’t think they’d been officially introduced. “You’re Fairfax.”

“That’s right. I’m also Gray’s friend.” Moving slowly, as though he were afraid she would panic if he went too quickly, he eased her feet out of the body bag and undid the straps that were the last things holding her down.

Still, though, even once she was free, she couldn’t seem to stand. She just stared up at Fairfax. “Where is he?”

Gray had come for her. The realization shimmered through her. Whether or not he wanted her, or wanted to want her, he’d come for her. He’d chased Lee, had
been fighting him as the car disappeared. Then the gunshots. What had happened? Was he alive? Dead?

“We’re working on that. Come on. Let’s get you out of there.” Fairfax hauled her to her feet. He used the bulk of his own body to block her view of the scene, but she caught sight of the corner of the gurney and the still-idling van, and shuddered.

If Lee hadn’t arranged to transfer her to the second vehicle…if Gray and the others hadn’t figured out where they would be…

Frowning, she glanced at Gray’s friend. “How did you find me?”

“GPS.” The agent nodded back at the van. “Hospital property.”

Mariah shuddered. “Lucky me.”

“Maybe not.” Fairfax sounded seriously grim. “Especially when you consider that they knew to disable the transponder on the prison van they stole during the jailbreak.”

She wrapped her arms around herself as the sharp air cut through her yoga pants and thin T-shirt, and she became aware of the cold ground beneath her sock-clad feet. “Maybe Lee forgot.”

“Maybe. Or maybe this was meant as a distraction. Maybe we were supposed to chase the van out here and find it abandoned, while other members of the cell do something else. But what?” Fairfax glanced down, seeming to notice for the first time that she was shivering against him. “Sorry. I’m thinking out loud. Let’s get you into a squad car.”

But before they’d gone two steps, the big black chase
cars reappeared through the trees. Mariah stopped dead, almost afraid to hope. Then the rear door of the first SUV swung open and Gray emerged, looking bruised and battered, with one suit coat sleeve torn most of the way off and scratches along the side of his face. But he was alive. He was up and moving.

He straightened and scanned the crowd, and his eyes locked on her.

Mariah’s heart jolted, then started pounding in her ears as he strode toward her, looking simultaneously furious and implacable, and very much like the soldier who had saved her life twice now, once up on the mountain and again just now. When he reached her, he stopped a few feet away, and flicked a glance at Fairfax.

“I’ll take her,” Gray said, and he exchanged a look with his friend that conveyed a great deal more than those three small words.

Mariah knew she should be offended by the idea of being passed from one man to the next. And she would be, as soon as she stopped shaking. “Did you get him?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Gray shook his head. “Bastard booted me out of the minivan. Chase car nearly ran me over before I rolled into some scrub.” Before Mariah could react to that—if she could even figure out how—he raked her from head to toe with a cool-eyed inspection. But there was heat in his voice when he said, “Are you okay?”

I am now,
she meant to say, just as she meant to hold it together and be the practical, no-nonsense woman she prided herself on being these days.

Instead, she shook her head as tears filmed her vision.
“I hate this,” she whispered. “I hate all of it.” She meant the fear and the danger, and maybe—even a little bit—she meant him, and the emotions he stirred in her, emotions she couldn’t deal with. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“I know,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry.” And again, the few words he spoke were loaded with meaning. He approached her, and Fairfax stepped away, leaving the two of them to face each other.

Gray would’ve held her if she’d wanted it; she could see it in his eyes. He would’ve let her pretend that the embrace meant as much to him as it did to her. But he’d made his position crystal clear back at the hospital—he wasn’t in this for her, and he didn’t intend to let their connection interfere with his priority, which was bringing the bombers to justice. Well, she told herself, that was just fine with her, because she wouldn’t be safe until Lee and the others were off the street. Gray wanted nothing but business between them? Fine, that was what she’d give him. And, frankly, the sooner he and the others did their jobs and she was free to go back to rebuilding her life, the better.

So she leaned away from him and said, “What now?”

He looked at her long and hard, and after a moment his expression went cool and took on an edge she hadn’t seen before, one that she couldn’t quite place. “Now we debrief, and figure out if this was a planned distraction, or simply a case of your ex figuring he’d be faster than we were.”

“I’m very glad he wasn’t,” Mariah said. “Thank you for getting here so quickly.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten you out in the first place.” Scowling, Gray glanced over at one of the SUVs, where the cop from Internal Affairs was standing guard over the turncoat officer, preventing anyone from talking to him. “Looks like the problems in the Bear Claw PD go deeper than we suspected.”

“They took his family,” Mariah said, her heart aching. “And in the end, he did the right thing.”

“I would’ve found you even if he hadn’t flagged me down,” Gray said, transferring his attention to her, and she got the sense that he was saying more than that, whether he knew it or not.

In her heart, his words resonated as
I would’ve done whatever it took to find you.
And if that were simply her delusion—her needy, greedy wish to feel as though someone in this insane mess cared for her as a person rather than as a witness or an asset—then she acknowledged the weakness and kept it to herself.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she hugged herself. “You should look for his family.”

“We already found them.” His flat tone confirmed what the poor cop had guessed. Al-Jihad hadn’t left them alive as potential witnesses. When the news brought another shiver, Gray scowled and shucked out of his ripped suit jacket. He tossed it to her. “Here. You’re freezing.”

She didn’t argue. Nor did she take his gesture as a sign of anything but expediency. “Thanks.” She pulled on the jacket, which was way too big for her but felt like heaven. Resisting the urge to snuggle, she took a deep breath and steadied herself to do something she knew she should’ve done before. “I need to go back up to the cabin.”

That got his attention. “Why?”

“Because it’s my home.”

He shook his head. “You’re smarter than that. They got in once, they can do it again.”

She wrapped the suit coat tighter around her torso. “Not if you’re there to protect me.”

“I’m not a babysitter, and I’m not wasting my time playing bodyguard when I could be doing something more productive.” He paused, eyes narrowing. “And you know that. Which means you think returning to the cabin will be productive.”

She liked that he gave her credit, hated that he saw through her so easily. The transparency made her feel vulnerable, exposed. But she dipped her chin in a faint nod. “Earlier today, before you came into my room and…you know.” She waved away what had happened between them, determined to play it as no big deal, although the depth of her response had been a very big deal to her. She continued, “Anyway, earlier, I was just dozing, drifting, and I heard Lee’s voice whisper something about me helping them. And I’m pretty sure I remember him asking me about something, hounding me to tell him where something was. I’m not sure what.”

Gray went still. “I thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

“I think it’s coming back. I remember being tied up in the cabin, with him leaning over me.”

“You were drugged. Your mind could be playing tricks on you.”

“I’m convinced it was a real memory.”

His eyes narrowed. “One that didn’t surface during your debriefing? That’s convenient.”

Frustration sparked. The six hours she’d been questioned in a secure room deep within the Bear Claw PD prior to her transfer to the hospital had been difficult. With her lawyer present, she’d told the Feds everything she could remember about her captivity. She’d submitted to their blood tests, worked with a sketch artist to capture Brisbane’s—or rather Felix Smith’s—face, and even allowed Thorne Radcliffe, an FBI profiler with more than a touch of otherworldliness to his technique, to try hypnotizing her. “It’s not my fault Thorne couldn’t put me under. I told him before he started that I don’t hypnotize well.”

Actually, the mentalist had dubbed her “blocked” and “closed off,” but Gray didn’t call her on it. Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, giving her the impression that she was finally getting through to him. “You didn’t go under during hypnosis, yet you think visiting your cabin is going to shake the memories loose?”

“Not visiting. Staying there.” She lifted her chin. “What happened today changes nothing. Unless al-Jihad has another source for whatever he wants from me. I still need protection. The cabin is a fortress. Lee only got to me last time because I shut down the perimeter in order to get back inside. You’ve got access to more men and better equipment.”