Incriminating Evidence (27 page)

Lights came on in a row—as if the motion sensors had been triggered—and in the distance, she saw a man. Or at least she thought it was a man. A black mask covered his face, and something—like a gas mask?—covered his nose and mouth.

Nausea hit, breaking her fear-induced paralysis. Pain exploded along her occipital nerve. She turned and launched herself toward the elevator but feared her gait was more stagger than run. Behind her, she heard footsteps. The pain in her head ratcheted higher.

The elevator door remained open, and she pitched herself inside. As if drunk, she slapped a hand against the panel of buttons, praying she’d hit one that would close the door and this time the elevator would work.

She tucked herself to the side to get out of the sound wave’s path and braced both hands flat against the wall. She focused on the panel, trying to decipher the blurred controls. She remembered reading that the fluid in the eyes expanded and vibrated with the high frequency, causing pain and interrupting vision. She couldn’t read but saw something red on the panel. Emergency call button? She slapped it.

An alarm sounded.

The rapid lyrics from “Modern Major-General” pummeled her, causing a spike in pressure on her brain with every note.

She was trapped in a house of horrors.

She covered her ears and screamed as the world faded to nothing around her.

Chapter Twenty-One

A
lec paused in the stairwell and listened at the door. Every cell in his body wanted to burst into the corridor, but he couldn’t be stupid about this. He had no idea what was on the other side of that door. The sound of Isabel’s scream through the elevator emergency intercom still rang in his ears.

He nodded to Keith, who flanked the door to the right, and they both pointed their pistols at the ceiling in a ready position. Alec kicked open the door.

In smooth choreography, they slipped through the opening, Alec first, Keith at his back. Just like they’d done in Yemen a lifetime ago.

Also like Yemen, the basement appeared empty of Tangos.

This section of basement was dark—too dark—and he glanced up at the lights. Both the corridor lights and the exit sign were out.

The elevator alarm continued to wail. Isabel lay slumped in the opening, one leg protruding, preventing the door from closing. Only years of training stopped him from diving to her side. He had to ensure the area was clear first.

Keith checked the corridor while Alec cleared the elevators. Empty. He dropped to Isabel’s side. Her chest rose in a regular cadence. She was breathing.

Thank God.

“Isabel?” he said, gently tapping her cheek. He ran his hands down her body, searching for wounds, knowing he wouldn’t find any. This had all the earmarks of infrasound, which meant she’d likely come to but would feel sick and disoriented. Would she remember what happened?

The alarm shut off abruptly. Alec looked up to see Keith at the controls, resetting the system. “Thanks.”

Isabel groaned and rolled to her side. A good sign.

“Let’s get her to the clinic,” Keith said.

Alec scooped her up and stood. She lay slack in his arms as the doors slid closed.

Keith used the intercom to instruct security to send in the team waiting to search the basement. This search would likely be as fruitless as the last, and the person who’d assaulted Isabel could well be on the team, but they had to try.

Alec shifted her weight, cradling her against him. Her eyes fluttered open. She whimpered and tucked her head into his chest. “The light hurts,” she muttered.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked.

She nodded into his shirt and whispered something.

“What is it, honey?”

“Take me out of here.” Her words were faint, a dry rasp.

“I’m taking you to Dr. Larson.”

“No. I can’t stay in the compound.” Her voice rose, gaining strength. “They attacked my cabin so you’d bring me here. They
want
me here. I need to leave.”

Alec wanted to deny her point, but she could be right. Why had they attacked her cabin? To steal her laptop? That made no sense. The information on her computer—evidence she’d been sneaking onto Raptor land for months—was moot now. Harmless, given that Alec couldn’t press charges for the restraining order violation even if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to.

“You need to see Doc Larson,” he said.

“We can’t trust him. We can’t trust anyone. I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep. Then I’ll feel better.”

“My quarters,” Alec said to Keith. “Ground floor.”

“
No.
Alec. I have to leave.”

“I trust Keith and Ethan, but I can’t spare them to guard you outside the compound. I have soldiers arriving in a few days. We need to be ready. You aren’t safe alone in your cabin.”

“I’ll go to another prove-up. One no one knows about.”

“You’d be isolated. Alone. Anything could happen, and I couldn’t be there to help you. You’ll be safe in my quarters. With me. Tomorrow we’ll figure something else out.”

She held his gaze, her eyes were so bleak, so tired, it broke him a little bit. Finally, she nodded.

The door slid open, and he stepped into the corridor.

“I can walk,” Isabel said, and she wiggled to indicate he should set her down.

“Why walk when I can carry you? I owe you for dragging me through the woods.”

“If you think carrying me through a building with elevators and smooth, level floors makes up for my dragging your heavy, ungrateful carcass across miles of woods…”

“One mile of woods.”

“It felt like fifteen.”

Like seeing her chest rise and fall when she’d lain on the floor in the elevator, the teasing was a relief. She wouldn’t be Isabel if she didn’t tease him, and he wouldn’t have her any other way.

He carried her into his suite and straight to his bed. The second time he’d deposited her in a bed and wished it were for other reasons.

He nodded to Keith, who pulled out a scanner to sweep the room for listening devices. “Room’s clean of bugs,” Keith said.

Alec called security. “What was up with the elevators?” he asked.

“Near as we can tell, sir, the moment Ms. Dawson stepped inside, all elevators were switched to ‘fire emergency lock’—they were called to the basement and locked with doors open.”

“How did that happen? Someone pulled an alarm?”

“No, sir. If they had, we’d have known the elevators were offline before Ms. Dawson hit the emergency call button. It appears someone hacked our system and had access to the elevator controls.”

Given that Alec and Keith had been in the security room trying to figure out what happened to the camera feed when Johnston collapsed, and that the elevator controls were in the security room, he had to agree. The two men working in security couldn’t have locked down the elevators without him noticing. Could they?

“Upload the video camera feed from the elevator and the basement corridor cameras to the Raptor FTP site.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up and dialed Lee Scott, the computer security specialist who’d locked down the system after the major hack in July. He answered immediately. “Lee, there’s been another breach.”

“I was just on the phone with your security team and see it on the shared screen. No doubt it came from inside.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Not from here.”

“How soon can you get to Tamarack?”

“I’ll look up flights. Tomorrow evening, probably.”

Keith tapped him on the shoulder. “Josh and Sean are taking the BD-700. They were supposed to depart in an hour.”

To Lee, Alec said, “The company jet is heading this way. How soon can you get to Dulles?”

“This time of night? Forty-five minutes.”

“Give yourself time to pack, make it ninety. The jet will be waiting.”

Alec hadn’t even hung up with Lee before Keith was on his phone with one of the pilots explaining that they needed to wait for a third passenger.

Calls completed, Alec said to Isabel, “Tell us what happened.”

She sat up in the bed and took a sip of water from a glass Keith handed her, then leaned against the pillows and launched into her story. When she told him about hearing the song she’d been singing in the woods, he swore. “They heard you. They were there the entire time.”

And now they’d used that to torment her.

She nodded, pulling the bedding closer around her as she did so. She finished her nightmare story, and Alec itched to pull her into his arms but didn't think she’d appreciate that in front of Keith. He had to remind himself that she had a reputation for being reserved, even standoffish with others, because she wasn’t that way with him.

She took another sip of water. “I’m feeling better. It seems like it’s wearing off faster than when they attacked my cabin. But then, I also remember everything that happened this time around.”

“Let’s see what the video cameras picked up.” Alec opened the feed on his laptop.

He’d spent good money on new cameras throughout the compound when he took over, and the feed was crystal-clear color. The elevator doors slid open. Several moments later, Isabel stepped out. She left the range of the first camera. Alec paused that video and switched to the corridor recording.

Isabel froze, fear plain on her face.

“I wish we had sound,” Keith said. “Then we could figure out where the music came from by checking which cameras picked up the noise.”

On the screen, Isabel grimaced and staggered to the elevator, and everything played out as she described. After she collapsed, nothing moved for several minutes until Alec and Keith entered from the shadows.

Alec opened the video link for the elevator. It matched the footage from the corridor camera. Isabel staggered inside and hit the buttons. She hit the red emergency button, which set off the alarm, and opened the intercom to Isabel’s scream, alerting Alec in the security room.

He frowned. He’d hoped they have some glimpse of the masked man, but he’d remained in the shadows, away from the cameras.

Keith cleared his throat. “Rav, we need to cancel the training. It’s not safe here. For anyone.”

The words settled in the room, drifting like falling feathers, when they should have landed with the force of a brick. But deep down, Alec had known since he swam down the frigid river this was the inevitable choice.

He wasn’t just going to cancel the training; he needed to close the compound. “Looks like you’re getting your way after all, Isabel.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
sabel dreamed about Vin. She hated waking from those dreams, the abrupt return to a world in which he was gone, after she’d had moments of joy at seeing him again, of believing that the last year had been the nightmare, and the dream was real.

Now here she was again, post-dream, and depressed. No. Not depressed—at least, not this time. Tonight, she was pissed. Vin was
gone
, and the people who had stolen him from this world were messing with her. They’d hurt her, repeatedly.

They’d terrified her and made her feel helpless, exposed. Vulnerable. All the things she’d felt when she was fourteen and lost her parents. But then her big brother had changed the entire direction of his life to prevent her from going into foster care.

She was mad as hell now.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. One a.m. She was alone in Alec’s bed; he slept on the couch in the sitting room—guarding her even in his sleep while the compound was still full of mercenaries who couldn’t be trusted.

She sat up in bed, pulling her knees to her chest. She was wide-awake, riled, and a man she was intensely attracted to slept mere feet away. Would Alec be willing to engage in a bout of angry sex to break the tension coiled in her body?

Not that she was angry with Alec. Her rage was reserved for Vin’s killers.

It infuriated her that she was now afraid of the basement. And the elevator. And
Pirates of Penzance
.

Masks were also on her shit list.

She opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out the box of condoms.