Broken Trust (9 page)

“Don’t worry,” he spoke low. “I
won’t let anything happen to you.”

He was now comforting her. His
words of assurance helped her feel better, but she knew he was still just one
man and injured at that.

Woof! Woof!

The dog’s call came from lower down
the mountain, deep in the forest heading away from the cabin.

“Grunt has something on the run and
they’re moving fast,” Mac spoke softly.

Toni’s nails bit into his palm.
“What do you think he’s chasing?”

He shook his head. “Just stay close
and don’t worry.”

Hah! Easier said than done.

She followed behind as he made his
way over the bumpy terrain. The route he chose took them off the main trail and
deep into the forest. They came out behind the cabin, just beyond the privy.
Several times as they walked, Mac paused, listening to Grunt’s barking. The
dog’s sounds faded as the animal moved farther away from the cabin. Toni held
her breath, sensing now was a good time for silence.

When they entered the clearing,
they froze. The wicker chairs had been knocked over, the cushions tossed aside
on the deck. The door to the cabin stood wide open. Clothing and papers
littered the yard. Grunt’s barking could be heard coming from the trees far
below.

“Stay here.” Mac hopped over to the
shed and returned with a rifle.

Toni stared with horror. When he
cocked the gun, she flinched and prayed Hank and Inez were safe.

As Mac approached the door, he
raised the weapon. He placed his finger on the trigger, his eyes narrowed to
black, piercing points.

Toni held her breath while he
disappeared inside. When he reappeared, he lowered the gun and jerked his head
toward the cabin. “You have got to see this.”

Toni exhaled, dreading whatever
might be inside.

“Hey! What’s going on here?” Hank
came up the trail with Inez close beside him.

“What happened here? What a mess,”
Inez exclaimed.

Mac waved to his parents. “Take a
look inside. Someone did this while Toni and I were down at the lake.”

Inez crossed the deck while Hank
studied the ground.

“What are you looking for?” Toni
asked.

“That.” Hank pointed at fresh
tracks in the dirt showing ridges and half-moons from the sole of someone’s
shoes.

Frown lines creased Mac’s brow.
“You recognize the prints?”

“Nah, they’re new,” Hank said.
“It’s not the man that shot at Toni last night, and it’s not your friend
Hooper. We passed him down below on the trail. He said he’d been up here
visiting you. Whoever ransacked our cabin is one man, wearing boots. See how
the impression of his footprint is too large to be a woman’s, and it cuts
deeper into the soil? This man is about thirty pounds heavier than Hooper. I
could follow the trail easy enough.”

Mac shook his head. “I think he’s
long gone. Let’s see what’s missing, first.”

The print looked like any other
boot track to Toni. How Mac and Hank could tell a person’s weight and gender,
then follow him simply from his foot print, seemed like a rare art form. No
wonder the military hired Hank to train recruits for the special forces.

They went inside the cabin and she
gawked at the mess. Bedding and mattresses lay askew. Drawers had been pulled
open and emptied onto the floor. Papers littered the room.

“My purse.” Toni snatched up the
stylish handbag from where someone had tossed it on the floor. The contents lay
scattered all around and she expected to find her money and credit cards
missing.

Mac joined her as she inspected her
wallet. “How odd. Everything’s here.”

“I don’t find anything missing,
either,” Inez called from the doorway of her bedroom. “They didn’t take our
cash or valuables.”

“But why trash the cabin and not
take anything?” Hank asked.

Mac shrugged. “Maybe it was
someone’s idea of having fun. Remember we had some teenaged vagrants at the
lake two years ago. They were hiding out and stealing from campers when they
left their campsites to go hiking. It took the forest ranger several weeks, but
he finally caught them.”

He didn’t look convinced and Toni
felt more uneasy. She didn’t understand any of this. What was going on?

“They had fun, all right,” Hank
spoke in a sarcastic tone. “When we got to Toni’s car, we found the tires
slashed. She’s not going anywhere in that vehicle.”

“The man with road rage must have
done it.” Toni couldn’t believe someone would actually do such a thing. A heavy
foreboding settled over her and she pressed her fingertips to her temples,
trying to calm the pounding in her head.

“We’ll notify the sheriff as soon
as we get into town.” With effort Mac bent over and picked up a packet of
photographs of him and Eric in Afghanistan. The pictures had spilled from
Toni’s purse. He sat in the recliner and stretched out his long legs as he
gazed intently at them, one-by-one.

“I think I’ll go see if I can find
out where the culprit got to,” Hank said.

“You’re not going alone.” Inez took
her husband’s arm.

“Just be careful you two,” Mac
cautioned.

Hank grinned and indicated his gun.
“Now, son, you know what a careful man I am.”

Turning, Hank stepped outside with
Inez and they followed what appeared to Toni to be an invisible trail into the
trees.

She watched them go, worried,
unable to shake an ominous feeling. “You think they’ll be okay? I know your
father’s got special training, but he can’t stop a bullet.”

She shivered at the thought.

“Don’t worry. Dad knows how to
handle himself. And he’d die before letting anything happen to Mom.”

“Do you really think a kid made
this mess? They didn’t even steal my money.” Toni held up her wallet and fanned
the green bills as proof.

“Toni, where did you get these
pictures?” Mac spoke almost absentmindedly, seeming enthralled by the photos he
still held in his large hands.

She barely spared him a glance as she
set a chair upright and straightened the rug. “Those are the photos Eric sent
with his letter. The ones I made from his flash drive. I printed them off
yesterday, just before I drove down here. Why? Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, something’s very wrong.”

Mac held up a photo of him posing
with Eric and another man Toni didn’t recognize. The scenery behind them showed
a mountain of red sand. The picture could have been taken anywhere in Iraq or
Afghanistan. The three men wore camouflage fatigues and looked like the best of
pals, smiling and happy as they flexed their muscles and clowned around.

Toni’s stomach wrenched every time
she gazed at Eric’s lopsided grin. She missed her brother terribly. “What’s
wrong with that picture?”

Mac’s jaw tightened. “All of these
hero shots of Eric and me were taken three days before the ambush. We’d just
found out we had leave coming, so we felt pretty happy. Later that evening, I
noticed Eric seemed upset. When I asked about it, he insisted it was nothing he
couldn’t handle on his own. He wouldn’t tell me, but I knew something was
wrong.”

“So?”

“This picture isn’t right.” He held
up the photo again. “This third man happens to be an intelligence officer named
Lieutenant Ryan Andrus. He worked with Eric on special projects, but none of
the rest of our team knew him at all.”

Toni took the picture from Mac and
examined it. Andrus stood about three inches taller than Mac, his body gangly,
with bright red hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose.
“Yes, I remember you mentioning Lieutenant Andrus to Agent Hooper earlier this
morning. But why is this picture a problem?”

“I met Andrus for the first time
just one hour before the chopper picked us up for the mission.”

“And?” Toni prodded.

“And there is no possible way I
could have posed in this picture with him and Eric. That photograph has
obviously been altered to put all three of us together.”

She hesitated, then rifled through
her purse one more time. She searched every pocket, scanning the floor for any
scrap of paper she may have overlooked. Her insides clenched and a sick feeling
settled in the pit of her stomach.

“Oh, no.” Her throat tightened and
she could barely breathe.

“What, Toni? What’s wrong?”

She stared at him, fear burning the
back of her mind. “Eric’s letter. It’s gone.”

Chapter Nine

“Eric’s letter is the only thing
missing. Who would have taken it? And why?” Toni sat back in the rocking chair,
looking deflated and frightened.

Mac wanted to say something to
soothe her, but knew it’d do no good. “I think we both know. Whoever Eric
feared must have followed you here.”

“Do you think the man with road
rage last night and the person that trashed the cabin today are connected?”

“I don’t know, yet. They may have
nothing to do with each other. But whoever was in the cabin may want Eric’s
secret file. The fact they took his letter tells me they knew what they were
after.”

“But how could they know about
Eric’s letter, unless they saw him write it or he told them about it?”

“I don’t know.”

Her gaze locked with his and he saw
panic in her eyes.

“Do you think whoever it is would
go to my house?” she asked. “What about my grandma and Cara? I’ve got to warn
them. If only we had cell phone service here. I’ve got to get back to Vegas.”

She came to her feet, grabbing her
car keys. Mac waved her back. “Hang on. You can’t go anywhere yet. Your tires
were slashed. My folks will be back in a few minutes and then we’ll take the
boat across the lake. Even with this delay, we still should reach Clarkston
before our intruder. That’s the nearest town, and he’d have to pass through
there on his way out of the mountains.”

Uncertainty glimmered in her eyes
as she paced the floor. “You really think we can get there first?”

He wasn’t certain, but he couldn’t
let her lose control right now. If nothing else, he believed they had time to
call and get Bernice and Cara Hamilton out of their house and somewhere safe.
“It’ll be all right. Calm down. We don’t have any reason to believe our burglar
would go to your house. As soon as we get to Clarkston, you can call your
grandma and warn her. It’ll take quite a bit of time to get a tow truck out
here to haul your car into town. If you’d prefer, I can drive you to Vegas.”

“Yes, please. I just want to get
home. I can retrieve my car later. It’s not my priority right now.”

Trust filled Toni’s eyes, wringing
every ounce of empathy from his heart. As she chewed her bottom lip and
fidgeted with her keys, he felt an overwhelming urge to take her into his arms
and comfort her.

Mac resisted the impulse. He had no
right to be close with her anymore. Instead, he looked at the other photos
strewn across his lap, searching for some logical answer as to why only one
picture showed him posed with Eric and Lieutenant Andrus. It didn’t make sense.
What had Eric gotten himself involved in?

“Mac, what does all of this mean?”
Toni asked.

“I’m not sure.” He hesitated.
“Obviously this picture has been electronically altered. Eric was good at that.
He even doctored a photo of Colonel Wilkinson just before his retirement
party.”

Toni gave a wobbly laugh. “Yes,
Eric wrote and told me he blew up a photo of the Colonel wearing a pink and
yellow polka-dot bikini.”

The memory of that hilarious night
filled Mac’s mind. He and Eric had laughed with the other marines until their
sides ached. Always a good sport, the Colonel enjoyed it, too.

Toni studied the photo. “But why
would Eric include Andrus in this picture if you didn’t even know him?”

Mac shook his head, wracking his
brain for answers. “It could be a clue. A strategy to draw my attention to that
particular photograph. I definitely want to look at that flash drive. It may
include something you overlooked. Eric knew of ways to hide information that an
average person could never imagine, unless they knew what to look for.”

“It’s possible.” She fingered the
lanyard beneath her sweatshirt, no doubt thinking about her grandmother and
sister all alone in their house.

“They’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
He hoped his words were true.

Pens and pencils littered the top
of his desk. He braced his hand against the wall as he scooped them up and
placed them back in the pencil jar. Then, he sat back in his chair. As he
closed his eyes, he ignored the throbbing pain in his leg.

Eric had been involved in something
Mac didn’t understand. The thought of leaving the mountain and facing Toni’s
family might prove the hardest thing he’d ever done. But Eric would do the same
for him and he owed Eric. Big time.

“Mac, are you sure you’re up to
this?”

He opened his eyes and found her
gazing intently at his face. “Yes, I’m just thinking. I’ve got to see that
flash drive and find out what Eric was afraid of.”

“You want us to come with you to
Vegas?”

Mac looked up and saw his father
standing in the doorway, his gruff face tight with anger.

Mac shook his head. “No, we’ll be
okay. I’ll send word to Larry across the lake if I need you.”

Larry Coolidge was an old family
friend that lived on the other side of the lake and let them park their
vehicles on his property.

“I can’t believe someone would do
this.” Inez MacKenzie came inside the cabin and began tidying up the mess.

“I’m so glad you’re back. We’ve got
to leave right now. My family could be in danger.” Toni hurried to help Mac
stand, then handed him his crutch.

“Did you find the intruder?” Mac
asked Hank.

“Yep,” Dad said. “We trailed him to
where he’d parked his car. He’s gone, now. Headed toward Clarkston on the main
road. If you take the shortcuts, you might be able to beat him into town and
alert the sheriff.”