Hunted, A Romantic Suspence Novel (29 page)

Good thing. If Matt were here, he’d fuss at her about injuring herself again. Funny how in such a short time she’d gotten used to someone worrying about her.

She slipped the ropes back on her shoulders again and headed into the woods.

Gideon watched the girl wiggle under the fence through his field glasses. A smile split his lips. No wonder he or the feds hadn’t found the papers in the compound. They weren’t here. The girl had hidden them in the woods.

For years he’d told the Prophet his stepdaughter was smart. Strict never believed him. Even now she still had a few tricks up her sleeve.

Gideon grabbed his rifle and slipped the strap over his shoulder, then headed down the stairs from the meeting hall’s roof. All night he’d camped there in the cold, waiting for his prey to come to him. Now he’d track her.

At the fence he saw drops of blood.

“Sarah, you know better than to leave a trail.”

He scaled the fence, pausing at the top to snip the barbed wire with his wire cutters. Landing on the other side, he paused to listen. Faint sounds of snow and branches crunching in the woods ahead. Nothing behind.

Since she took rappelling gear with her, he already knew where she was headed. Years ago she’d struggled with the rappelling cliff behind the compound. Compared to places in the Rockies, it wasn’t a high cliff.

But Strict had been relentless with Sarah. He’d drilled his stepdaughter repeatedly on the ropes, humiliating her every time she froze. Gideon couldn’t count the number of times she’d hung suspended in air while the other trainees went home for dinner. Finally, she’d made it down the cliff in one attempt.

“Leave it to Sarah to hide the plans to Strict’s ultimate revenge in the one place Strict assumed she’d avoid.”

Every time she’d been given an obstacle, she’d overcome it. Gideon had always admired that in her. Such a shame to have to snuff out her light. But he had a higher calling. He had the Prophet’s bidding to fulfill. Not even a sweet, smart thing like Sarah could get in the way.

Katie stood on the cliff’s edge, the rope wrapped around her body and secured to a thick oak some twenty feet away. The other rope dangled over the edge beside her. She’d need both ropes to get herself and the strong box she’d lugged down the cliff a decade ago back to the top.

To calm her nerves, she took a deep breath.

“You can do this, Katie. You did it once before in the dead of night, cold, scared and desperate. This is no big deal.”

She took a step backwards out into space, and let the rope take her weight.

Oh God, she hated this feeling. Her body hung suspended in the air for a second then her feet made contact with the mountain wall.

“You only have thirty feet to go. You can do this.”

Slowly, she worked her way down the mountainside—sweat beading on her brow with each push off. Her arms ached with the force of inching down the rope and supporting her weight. Her breath fogged out around her each time she exhaled.

Finally, she hung suspended in front of a small cave. For years, this was the place where she’d frozen while Strict hurled insults and obscenities at her from above. The night she’d escaped, she knew he’d never look for her or his stolen papers here. Now she prayed they’d stayed safe from the world in this little divot in the mountainside.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed with her legs until she swung out, then back in, landing on the dirt- and moss-covered cave’s floor. She untied her rope and pulled the flashlight out of her pocket. Swinging the beam to the cave’s farthest corner, the light flashed on the flat rectangular box’s dull metal exactly where she’d left it a decade ago.

She knelt beside it and pulled the knife from the scabbard to pry open the latches, which had rusted shut through the years. She slipped the knife back in place, sat in front of the box and lifted the lid. “Now what does Strict have hidden inside you that he needs so badly?”

Katie lifted out a pile of papers.

“Lists of names and money donations. Oo, a senator and a couple of congressmen. Bet they don’t want this to see the light of day. But I’ll also bet this isn’t what he’s looking for.”

Plans for buying more land and building training camps nationwide, lay in the layer beneath.

“Great, just what we need--more compounds to abuse and brainwash people. One wasn’t enough?”

She rifled through order forms for weapons, computers, even satellite-television installation. “Probably wanted to watch his face on all the international news stations.”

In the bottom lay an envelope sealed in plastic. “What’s this? And how did I miss it before?”

Well, that was easy to explain. The night she’d escaped, she only wanted to find enough evidence to put the man on death row. Strict’s future catastrophic plans weren’t high on her priority list that night.

Carefully, she opened the plastic and pulled out the envelope. She peeled back the sealed flap and laid the contents on the box’s metal lid. Holding the flashlight she read them.

The first page contained lines of sixteen digit numbers. The second, an army memo stating that a shipment of surface-to-air missiles was missing from a nuclear munitions cache on the eastern seaboard. It was dated five days before the Federal Building bombing had taken place.

“Holy shit!”

No wonder Strict was desperate for this. Gideon could take out any target he wanted if he had the right codes. Strict could use it to leave a parting mark on the United States and the devastation would continue for years afterwards.

She needed to destroy the numbers before Gideon found her. It was only a matter of time before he figured out she’d come back to the compound to find the papers. Too bad she didn’t have any matches. Best to keep them on her person until the job was done. She slipped them into the back waistband of her jeans for safekeeping.

She tied the extra rope to the strong box. For a moment she studied the cave. It had served its purpose. Hopefully, she’d never see the inside of it again.

She secured the rope around her, and swung free from the cave, hanging a moment, before beginning her slow ascent up the cliffside.

Once she reached the top, she turned and tugged on the other rope. The strong box’s weight pulled on her already aching muscles, but she knew from experience the pain would be worse if she stopped and started again.

Finally, she had the box beside her on the edge of the cliff. She untied the rope then hefted the metal container into her arms. Turning, she froze.

Gideon stood between her and the forest. He had a cigarette in one hand and a .357 Magnum in the other, pointed right at her.

“Hello, Sarah.”

Matt jumped out of the SUV as soon as they stopped beside the car where Katie left it. He knelt and studied the ground. Luke squatted beside him, a long-distance sniper rifle he and Castello’d picked up along the way slung over his shoulder.

“No other vehicles have been in this area.” Matt pointed to the untouched snow all around them. “And the only tracks leading into the compound are Katie’s.”

Luke nodded. “If Gideon’s here, he didn’t come in this way.”

“You check the perimeter and see if he’s here.” Matt said, pulling his weapon from his pocket. At least Katie left him his gun. “I’ll take the Marshal and search the compound.”

“You’re sending the kid to fix the perimeter?” Castello asked, taking out his own weapon. “I know he’s your brother, but this guy’s dangerous and millions of lives may be at stake.”

“Right now I’m worried about only one life—Katie’s. You ever been deer hunting?”

“No. What’s that got to do with finding Katie or stopping Gideon?”

Matt stalked up the path with the Marshal close on his heels. “When we were kids, our dad and uncles took us deer hunting. Luke was going through this Indian scout phase, and developed a great love for tracking. If Gideon came in here, my brother will find where.”

“Hell, even I could track him in this snow,” Castello muttered, following Matt.

Matt traced Katie’s tracks to the path’s far side, away from the abandoned dog kennels. Her old instincts of self-preservation had taken over again. Even though no dogs were in the cages, she was avoiding them. “True, but Luke can find him if he came in before last night’s snowfall.”

Castello nodded and walked to the path’s other side.

They didn’t exchange another word as they entered the compound’s center. The place reminded Matt of a cross between an army barracks and one of those pictures of the abandoned concentration camps in Europe just after World War II. The cold starkness of it drilled home just how desolate Katie’s life must’ve been here.

Her resiliently strong spirit amazed him more every minute. No wonder he loved her. He paused, staring down at her tracks. What if he never got a chance to tell her? The idea scared the hell out of him.

“Find something?” Castello whispered from the opening’s other side.

Matt shook his head, and motioned for him to move around the right side of the compound and he’d go to the left. Watching every building as he approached for any kind of movement, he followed Katie’s tracks around the periphery of a central building.

Directly opposite the building’s main entrance the tracks grew jumbled He studied them and the large circle on the ground. Why had Katie stopped here? And why did it look like she had fallen or lay down in the snow? Had she been injured? Which of her nightmares had come to haunt her here?

Then he saw the flag pole directly across from where she’d stopped. Anger and disgust swamped him. That was where her whippings took place. That was why she stopped here. God, he wanted to raze this fucking place to the ground.

He forced his mind to concentrate on finding Katie. Her footprints picked up again going around behind the main building. As he started to follow them a movement to his left caught his attention.

He raised his gun and waited.

Luke appeared from between two buildings, both hands raised in surrender. “Whoa, big brother. Don’t shoot. Just your friendly scout here.”

“I ought to put a hole in you just for sneaking up on me like that,” Matt whispered, lowering his weapon.

“You’re the one that sent me looking for another entrance and any sign of the hit man. Which I found, by the way. Besides, you can’t shoot me. Mom wouldn’t like it.”

“What’d you find there?”

“A second gate sort of hidden in the woods, tracks from last night with fresh snow in them, and a late model, four-door Ford sedan.”

“So he’s here.”

Luke nodded. “We’d better find Katie before he does.”

“I think he already has. See the tracks coming out of that center building?” Matt pointed to the path. “He must’ve been in there watching for her to arrive. Then followed her.”

They continued tracing her path until they met Castello coming out the munitions shack’s open door.

“She came in here, and must’ve gotten rope. A cabinet is open and it’s stocked with tons of the stuff.”

Luke pointed around behind the building. “She headed down there.”

When they reached the spot where Katie had crawled beneath the fence, Matt’s heart sank more. “She’s re-injured her thigh. See the blood trail she left?”

“Our man saw it, too.” Luke pointed to the second set of tracks in the snow on the fence’s other side. “Where’s she headed that she needs rope?”

Matt knew exactly where and what she was doing. His sense of urgency doubled. He’d seen her frozen in the air, hanging out a window, unable to move up or down. If she’d gone over the side of a mountain, and Gideon caught her in the middle of a memory, she’d be easy prey.

He scaled the fence, catching his jacket sleeve on the barbed wire. He pulled the material loose and dropped to the other side, heading for the woods at a dead run.

Suddenly, something hit him from behind, and he landed in the snow with Luke on top of him. He pushed him off, coming up with both fists swinging. “Get out of my way, Luke.”

Luke ducked his punch and head butted him. They landed in the snow again. “Think for a second, man. If we go storming in there without knowing where he is or what she’s doing, we could get her killed.”

“He’s going to kill her anyway. I can’t let that happen.” Matt shoved him off again, scrambling to his feet but reining in his urge to run.

“Your brother’s right.” Castello stood between them. “Gideon thinks she’s alone out there, Edgars. He’s focused on her and getting those papers. Until the cavalry gets here, we’re her element of surprise and the only hope she’s got.”

“Cavalry?”

“The Marshal made some calls while we were en route to you,” Luke said, picking up his sniper rifle from the snow. “Help is on its way.”

“How many?” Matt asked, looking at Castello.

“Could be two or could be twenty. But they’re at least an hour behind us.”

“Let’s get moving then, but we’ll make it quiet.” Matt hated admitting it, but they were right. If they didn’t get Gideon this time, he’d keep coming after Katie. He wanted her safe and in his arms right now. But more importantly, when he had her there, he didn’t ever want to lose her again.

“Whatever’s in this box won’t do the Prophet any good anymore, Gideon. He’s going to die at midnight tonight. There’s no way that will be stopped.” Katie took a step toward him, and away from the cliff’s edge. “Can’t you let his crazy dreams die with him?”

“Stop right there, Sarah.” He shifted his weight.

She froze again. “My name isn’t Sarah anymore. Sarah ceased to exist the day I escaped this place. Call me Katie.”

“Of course,
Katie
.” A smile split his lips.

She’d forgotten how handsome he could be when he smiled. It was one of the things that made people trust him so easily, especially a young, frightened teen. But she’d seen him shoot at her yesterday, knew he’d ruthlessly killed three people to get to her, and he held a gun on her now. That smile didn’t fool her one bit. At this moment she knew she stared into her own angel of death’s face.

“Now set the box down, Katie. I’ve always admired your brains. Don’t make a fool out of us both by trying anything heroic.”