Cindy Gerard - Killing Time

Regardless, they were still at square one. The only positive note was that if Salinas and Brown had what they needed to expose him, it would have hit the papers by now. He’d have been notified that charges had been filed and an international manhunt would be underway. None of that was in the wind.

Which meant the clock ticked for all of them. If he found them first, they died and he won. He had every intention of winning.

His secure phone rang. When he saw the return number, his pulse spiked. The call was from Mark Barnes, his cyber-surveillance guru. “Tell me you have news.”

“Someone hacked into the CIA database using the Salinas woman’s user ID and passcode.”

That someone had to be Eva or someone acting on her behalf. For the first time since Jane had called to inform him of her failure, he felt some relief.

Mike and Eva left Dulles at 8:30 the next morning and after an eight-hour flight with a connection in Denver, landed in Spokane, Washington, around 2:30 p.m. mountain time. The black Jeep Cherokee that was waiting for them was well used and rode like a lumber wagon as Mike drove down Highway 2, heading for Squaw Valley, Idaho, and the UWD compound. If Mapquest and their calculations were correct, they were looking at another hour or so tops.

Beside him in the passenger seat, Eva consulted an area road map. He still couldn’t get used to the way she looked as Maria. They’d done their best to drab her down. Her face was free of makeup. A quick dye job had turned her hair a muddy brown that she’d pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail. And just in case her washed-out jeans, loose blue tank top, and worn tennis shoes didn’t finish the look, they’d given her a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

In theory, everything combined should have transformed her into the equivalent of a brown paper bag.

Fat chance.

They could shave her head and dress her in a gunnysack and she’d still take his breath away. She was that stunning. Add in the vulnerability factor that the loss of her apartment had triggered, and piggyback that onto a rock-solid—some might call it pigheaded—resolve to see this through to the end… and hell, he was flat-out, un-freaking-believably captivated by everything about her.

Yeah, captivated . Who was he, Lord-freaking-Byron, all of a sudden? He didn’t think in those terms. Hot. Smokin’. Sexilicious. Those were his kind of words. What the hell was wrong with him?

Concentrate, sucker. And cut yourself some slack. Spending hours on end on a plane and now in this vehicle with her didn’t help. Thinking about last night, when he’d wanted to haul his sorry self up off the sofa where he hadn’t been getting any sleep, knock on her bedroom door, and invite himself back into her bed, didn’t help.

Dipstick—party of one. Your table is ready.

He did not get why this woman messed up his head so badly. He hadn’t met a bottle of pisco that screwed him up this much.

But right now, right now, he had to get his head out of his ass, get it firmly in the game, and keep both of them alive.

A deer shot up from a ditch and he had to break hard and swerve to miss it, forcing his attention back to his driving.

“That was close.”

He glanced at Eva, then back at the four-lane highway, glad he was wearing shades so she couldn’t read his thoughts through his eyes. Close? She didn’t know the half of it.

“Been a long time since I’ve used anything but a GPS for directions.” Her businesslike tone grounded him to the task at hand.

In keeping with her living-on-a-shoestring budget and with his just-out-of-prison-with-no-work cover, they were running strictly low-tech. They had one buy-minutes-as-you-go cell phone between them, and the paper map since they had no GPS capability.

They also had two handguns tucked in the glove box—a Makarov, the commie version of a Walther PPK that Dan, recently released from the pen, would have bought on the sly and on the cheap, and hers was a Taurus PT92, a reasonably decent version of the handgun that Maria had carried in the Army before she’d separated from military service over a decade ago. They had no doubt that the cell and both guns would have to be surrendered before they stepped one foot into the compound. All fringe groups had a tendency to be a tad bit paranoid, but to come in carrying showed allegiance to the cause. Can we say trigger-happy, ladies and gents?

But without weapons they were toast if things got dicey, because once they hit that compound, they were on their own. The Squaw Valley compound was 540 acres surrounded by mountains and tall timbered forest. The moon wasn’t this remote. There would be no backup team lurking within earshot and no way to get a team anywhere close. Planning was their backup. Luck was their backup. Good acting was their backup. Stupid? Probably. Other options? None.

They did, however, have a contingency plan that had been put into play before they’d lifted off from Dulles, and could potentially even up the odds a bit if push came to shove. They’d flown to Spokane under yet different aliases, then ditched those IDs and became Dan and Maria Walker once they’d landed. As promised, Gabe had everything set up. BOI contacts on the ground had left the Jeep in airport short-term parking, the keys wired under the license plate.

Carrying a small amount of cash and two duffel bags with lightweight black night gear for recon hidden in the lining, a few regular clothes and basic necessities, they’d gotten in their ride and headed toward the Idaho panhandle.

“We stay on Highway 2—we’ll be down to two lanes soon, by the way—and take it all the way to Priest River. Shouldn’t be much more than a half hour. Then it’s only twenty miles, give or take, to the UWD compound.”

Before they went any farther, Mike wanted to check out the gear Gabe had set up for them.

The forest had been cut way back from the highway to make room for power lines and waterways, but when he turned off onto a gravel road less than a half mile later, they were suddenly up close and personal with towering pines, dense forest, and total isolation. A harbinger of things to come.

To make certain no one would see them, he turned onto what looked like a park access road and drove about a tenth of a mile until they were swallowed by trees.

“Let’s see what we’ve got.”

He tossed his shades on the dash, then got out, rounded the vehicle, and opened the passenger-side door. Reaching into the glove box, he dug around under the pistols until he got his hands on the screwdriver he knew he would find there. With Eva keeping watch, he started loosening the screws securing the interior door panel. When he carefully removed the panel and got a look inside, he let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Lord love a duck. Would you look at that.”

Along with an emergency phone they were to use daily to check in with Gabe and a pair of mini night-vision binoculars, both affixed to the metal door with Velcro straps, was a short-barreled M-4 rifle with a seven-inch stock. Two full magazines and several boxes of ammo were also strapped into the door.

“Nice.” He ran his fingers over the stock. “Not for dinking people in the head at five hundred yards, but one of these babies can hit a golf ball at one hundred yards. And up close, the muzzle flash would probably blind God.” He glanced at Eva. “Ever shot one of these?”

She nodded. “Firing range only. But I can handle it.”

He replaced the panel, then quickly checked the driver’s-side door. Two pistols identical to the ones in the glove compartment, plus ammo for both, were fastened inside.